By Benjamin Parke
Daily Bruin Contributor
If UCLA goes ahead with its plans to contract out its medical
records department and hospital laundry facility, legislation
currently being considered in Sacramento would require that
displaced employees be placed in other jobs.
Workers from both services at UCLA marched to Murphy Hall on
April 28 to protest the loss of their jobs, which would result if
the university goes ahead with its plans. Ethel Hill, who has
worked in the medical records department for 22 years, told the
demonstrators that the administration didn’t consider her
much of a priority.
“Now they want to put me out. They want me to be
homeless,” Hill told the crowd.
Senate Bill 1857 would require the University of California to
place Hill ““ and any other of its employees whose jobs are
eliminated due to the contracting out of services ““ into jobs
with the same classification and rate of pay as their previous
ones. The legislation, introduced by state Sen. John Burton, D-San
Francisco, would also reclassify casual workers as permanent
employees if they have worked for the UC for more than 120 days in
the past year.
The UC opposes the measure, saying that it restricts the
system’s ability to manage costs.
“These are very difficult financial times for academic
medical centers,” said Brad Hayward, a UC spokesman.
According to Hayward, UC hospitals have been driven to cut costs
to meet the requirements of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. He
added that managed care has provided tough challenges to hospitals
affiliated with academic institutions, and that UC needs the
flexibility to compete.
“This bill would limit our ability to cope with the new
fiscal environment,” Hayward said.
But union officials who represent workers whose jobs may be lost
to outsourcing had a different view.
“You tell me. Do you deal with your financial problems on
the backs of the most loyal and longest-serving workers, or do you
do it by enriching the top-level management with a 22 percent pay
increase?” said Willie Pelote, political and legislative
director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees.
Pelote said that upper management at UC received the pay
increase late last year.
Daniel Kim, senior budget consultant to state Assemblywoman
Sarah Reyes, D-Fresno, also had concerns about salary increases
among UC administrators.
“There are a number of issues involving UC ““ not
only contracting, but a general disparity that exists in
salary,” Kim said.
The UC system may actually be losing money by contracting, Kim
added.
“UC categorically says that they contract because it saves
money and provides better services,” Kim said . “I
don’t think there’s any proof to support
that.”
Kim added that although contractors may offer bids, which are at
the outset cheaper than what it costs the university to operate a
service in-house, after a year, the costs creep up and may become
even more expensive than they were in the first place.
“We do not take lightly the decision to contract
services,” said Hayward, adding that other alternatives were
looked at first.
Hayward said UCLA intends to do everything it can to find the
displaced workers other jobs. He also said that it isn’t
uncommon for hospitals to contract out services as UCLA wants to
do.
“My understanding is that many medical centers did so long
ago,” he said.
The bill on UC contracting passed the state Senate’s
education committee last week in a vote split along party lines
““ 10 Democrats supporting the measure and three Republicans
opposing it. It goes before the appropriations committee on
Monday.