5-day Group Health strike begins

By Kyung M. Song
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The walkout, set to begin at 7 a.m., already has forced Group Health to transfer maternity patients, reschedule outpatient surgeries and postpone back-to-school physical exams for some of its 540,000 members.

But Group Health executives said that all three-dozen medical centers and urgent-care clinics would maintain normal business hours until the strike ends at midnight Friday.

Group Health plans to rely on its nonunion workers, including staff physicians, as well as nurses brought in from temporary agencies to provide clinical services, said Scott Armstrong, the co-op's chief operating officer. In addition, Armstrong said, about a third of the estimated 1,700 members of Service Employees International Union District 1199NW (SEIU) have told Group Health that they intend to cross picket lines and report to work.

The union has opted not to strike at the Group Health Eastside Hospital in Redmond, the co-op's sole general in-patient facility, to minimize inconvenience to patients.

"Patients should expect same hours of operations and same levels of service," Armstrong said, adding that Group Health has made alternative arrangements for some patients.

Late last week, Group Health moved all expectant mothers out of its maternity unit at its Central Hospital on Capitol Hill in Seattle to Northwest Hospital, where the women will deliver their babies under the care of their Group Health physicians.

Armstrong said the co-op also moved up outpatient surgeries before the strike or postponed them until next week.

Carter Wright, a spokesman for the union, said SEIU couldn't vouch for Group Health's claim that a third of the union workers won't honor the strike. He said the strikers' intent is to send a message to management, not to impede patients from seeking care.

"We think the strike will be strongly supported," Wright said. "It will be a lawful, peaceful picket."

The walkout follows more than three months of increasingly contentious contract negotiations between the SEIU and Group Health over the company's efforts to implement monthly health-insurance premiums for the first time. On Aug. 12, the union issued the minimum 10-day strike notice required under federal law for health-care workers and made good on its threat.
 
The contract dispute pits seemingly equally determined foes. The SEIU, the state's largest health-care-workers union, in the past week agreed to two new contracts, with Swedish Medical Center and Valley Medical Center, that retain zero-premium health coverage for many workers. Union leaders insist Group Health can afford to do the same.

SEIU members at Group Health who work at least 10 hours a week now pay no monthly health premiums and receive 100 percent insurance coverage after paying $5 co-pays for doctor visits and prescription drugs. All of Group Health's nonunion workers and some employees who belong to other unions already pay monthly premiums.

The nonprofit co-op's executives contend that continuing the "virtually free" benefits for SEIU members is akin to asking their co-workers and Group Health customers to subsidize them.

Group Health's last contract offer called for raising co-pays to $15 and charging union workers 1 percent of base annual pay for individual coverage, 2 percent for coverage of individual plus spouse or individual and children, and 3 percent for family coverage.

For Group Health custodians, who earn an average of $13.88 an hour, that works out to $24 a month for employee and $72 for family coverage. For registered nurses, the highest-paid union workers with an average base pay of $68,800 a year, family coverage would cost $172 a month.

Armstrong said Group Health has offered pay raises that would offset the increases in workers' health-care costs by thousands of dollars for the duration of the new contract. For instance, nurses in Western Washington would receive a 4 percent raise the first year, followed by 3 percent raises in the second and third years.

Armstrong argued that some workers at Swedish and Valley will pay more for their health benefits than their counterparts at Group Health. Employees must work at least 36 hours a week to receive zero-premium family health coverage at Swedish and at Valley. Otherwise, employees will have to pay their way, as much as $400 a month for family coverage at Valley. Group Health is proposing charging higher premiums for union members who work fewer than 30 hours a week.

"The leadership of the union is asking their members to forgo more lost pay during the strike" than some of them would have to pay in increased health-care costs, Armstrong said.

Group Health nurses have gone on strike three times before, for one day last year in Spokane and for one day in Seattle in 1995 as well as for 38 days in 1989.

Cindy Christianson, a 15-year Group Health nurse and a union shop steward, crossed picket lines in 1995 — something she says she regrets to this day. Christianson said Group Health won changes that year to retiree medical benefits that will cost her and her husband hundreds of dollars more a month when she leaves the company.

Christianson accused Group Health of intimidating employees, especially lower-paid workers, from joining the strike today.

The company also has lined up $40-an-hour temporary nurses to replace Christianson and her colleagues this week. But Christianson said Group Health is demanding too much financial sacrifice from union members and said she'd gladly give up a week's pay to preserve her benefits.

"The majority of us are going out," she said. "We feel empowered right now."

Kyung Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com