Word: shea
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Damman also remembers one round of contract negotiations when she witnessed a heated argument between Gerald Shea, one of the local's original organizers, and the lawyer for a hospital. In every contract, Shea tries to insert a preamble stating that the goal is to maintain "the highest standards of patient care delivery in meeting the needs of the community." He also argues for insertion of an equal opportunity clause, which adds to the traditional prohibitions of discrimination on the grounds of race, sex and religious belief, the categories of political belief, sexual preference or marital status. "The lawyer kept...
Further allegations of unfair practice surfaced in the union's organizing campaign at Beth Israel which resulted in another union defeat, 593-294. The hospital charged Shea with assault and battery after an altercation with a hospital guard. Shea filed counter charges, and in December 1976 a court threw out the case. In addition, a state rate-setting commission ruled that Beth Israel had to return $19,000 in funds used to hire a Chicago management consulting firm which advised on ways to defeat the union...
...Shea and Rabkin disagree over the hospital's motives for carrying through the long appeal process. Shea says "Beth Israel was using legal procedure to delay and harass us--the issue was decided against them at every step." He adds the history of hostility between the hospital and the union shows a hospital bias against unions and a willingness to use any tactic to prevent hospital workers from joining unions. By appealing the case, Shea says, the hospital effectively prevented any distribution of union literature for four years...
...care. For this reason, the union and the hospital disagree over how broad a precedent the case poses. "It's the first Supreme Court decision of this kind, and it is certainly clear in the case of Beth Israel, though there will probably be a lot more cases," says Shea. Chandler, lawyer for the hospital, says, "I don't think there's any question that this is not a broad decision, and does not set any precedents." Chandler adds he disagrees with the Court's finding of facts, because "hospital calculations show that at least 60,000 patients visit...
Although the union has won this round, service workers at Harvard's teaching hospitals remain unorganized into unions, and the prospect of future union organization looks bleak at best. Shea says Local 880 will concentrate its organizing efforts on non-Harvard local hospitals, such as St. Elizabeth's in Brighton. Chandler, for his part, says he expects other legal decisions in the future to corroborate Beth Israel's view that hospitals merit special consideration from NLRB because their primary function is non-profit patient care...