Monday, February 3, 1997
FACULTY:
Union officials consider filing charge of unfair labor
practiceBy Hannah Miller
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA Medical Center laid off all 140 clinical lab
technicians (CLT) last Friday from the department of pathology,
three weeks after the layoff of all 79 of their supervisors.
Hospital administrators hold that such layoffs are to be
followed by reapplication and rehiring for 120 of the technician
positions and an unspecified number of the supervisory
positions.
"This has been an on-going process," said Judy Stanton, the
chief administrative officer of the department. "We need to be more
cost-efficient. The health care market is getting more
competitive."
Union representatives said they are considering filing an unfair
labor practice charge.
"There is no need to take such draconian measures, given (the
labs’) budgetary stability," said Cliff Fried, vice president of
the Union of Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE). "There
are other ways to deal with this, like attrition and job
sharing."
UPTE maintains that the hundreds of layoffs and rehires were
unnecessary, because the new job descriptions are almost exactly
the same as the old ones. Stanton counters that the jobs will
change significantly, as the academic and clinical pathology labs
are combined into new high-volume and special testing labs.
Meanwhile, CLT Barbara Freed is out of a job. "I’ve been here
almost 20 years," she commented. "They’re just very cold. It’s
really affecting people’s livelihoods." Freed, 53, is divorced, and
says that if she isn’t rehired, her retirement package will only be
equivalent to 26 percent of her current salary.
Many of the other CLTs have been at UCLA for 10 or even 20
years. Although preferential rehiring rights accrue for all those
laid off, the issue of seniority as a factor in rehiring is a
sticky one.
Fried, of UPTE, maintains that in initial talks on restructuring
last May, administrators promised to consider seniority in
rehiring.
But Human Resources Director Mark Speare argued that structural
changes will prevent an applicant’s seniority from influencing the
rehiring process. "It is literally impossible to apply seniority if
the new division doesn’t exist," Speare said.
In addition to the 140 CLTs laid off last Friday, 79 supervisors
were laid off Jan. 8.
Henry Hao received his pink slip on that date. Hao, a junior
supervisor in the former clinical chemistry lab, said he opposes
the layoffs in principle. "If they want to do something for the
patient, that’s good," said Hao. "But when something like this
happens, what’s the point of loyalty?"
Hao expressed his worry that the rehiring process would not pay
attention to employees’ performance records. A 20-year veteran of
the labs, Hao is an employee who would most likely benefit from
seniority considerations.
Hao also raised the question of whether the layoffs were
absolutely necessary. "I think everybody could be trained to do
these new things," he speculated.
Human resources declined to comment on this possibility. "I
don’t know that retraining won’t occur," Speare said. "We will be
working internally to do that." In addition, Stanton said that the
exact distribution of career and casual positions in the new
rehires has yet to be determined.
Speare maintained that "we have had a number of meetings with
UPTE about the changes. We’ve listened to their concerns." But UPTE
leaders argue that pathology department officials have not
respected the demands of the union, which represents 30 percent of
laboratory employees.
According to Fried, the department has withheld information
regarding job descriptions.
UPTE has requested the release of old job descriptions in order
to compare them to the new ones. "If they’re not new jobs, then
employees can ‘recall’ to their old ones," said Fried.
Lourdes Inchauspi, a CLT in the coagulation/bone marrow lab,
said she hopes to be rehired in the new high-volume testing lab,
but expressed worry about the effects of the restructuring.
The new, consolidated high-volume lab will be run 24 hours a day
for certain types of procedures, and according to Inchauspi, the
working conditions will be harsher.
"It’s going to be bare bones. There will be probably only one
person working the graveyard shift," she speculated.
Cost-cutting appears to have been a recurring theme since last
October, when these changes were initiated, said Stanton.
The CLTs’ termination notices attributed the layoffs to "expense
reduction requirements and the many and rapid changes occurring in
the healthcare market." As Stanton elaborated, "This is not unlike
what’s going on elsewhere."
But many of the laid-off employees feel that such measures are
overly directed at personnel. Barbara Freed said that she can
remember the exact words printed in a department newsletter: "They
said they believe in cutting swift and deep," she quoted.
The layoffs will take effect March 31, but administrators say
they plan to finish the rehiring by March 7 to avoid disrupting
service.
JUSTIN WARREN/Daily Bruin
Lourdes Inchauspi, a 20-year lab veteran, holds her layoff
notice given to her Friday while Henry Hao was laid off earlier
this January.