Affleck stumps for hospital workers
Actor backs SEIU's efforts to organize Hub teaching facilities
Actor and film director Ben Affleck took time out yesterday from promoting his new movie, "Gone Baby Gone," to stump for the powerful Service Employees International Union, which moved closer to launching a full-blown organizing campaign to unionize thousands of workers at Boston's teaching hospitals.
Affleck, who supported an effort to raise wages for Harvard University workers in 2000, endorsed the SEIU's campaign at a City Hall press conference. The union wants hospitals to sign agreements that would modify federal labor rules and could make it easier for the union to organize hospital workers.
"This is not a cheap city to live in and these folks are not asking for much," said Affleck, a Cambridge native whose father was a Harvard janitor. Affleck donned a purple union baseball cap and urged people to attend an afternoon rally in the Longwood Medical Area.
The union's effort also won the endorsement of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who attended the press conference. "The healthcare sector is the backbone of our economy," Menino said. "I want these workers to have the same benefits other hospital workers have."
At this early stage of the organizing campaign, the issues involve rules for organizing workers in a nonunion workplace. Typically, under regulations enforced by the National Labor Relations Board, a majority of workers must sign a petition supporting a union. Then, the labor board sets criteria to determine which workers will be eligible to participate in the union. Eventually, a secret ballot vote determines whether the union can represent the workers in collective bargaining for wages and other issues.
The SEIU is asking the hospitals to sign agreements for what it calls "free and fair" union elections. The agreements would prevent the hospitals from making disparaging statements about the union or taking a position on the organizing effort. The agreements can make it easier to organize workers.
Anestine Bentick, a medical assistant at South Boston Community Health Center, said she and fellow workers were intimidated when they sought to organize a South Boston nursing home.
"We were taken away from our patients and forced to watch antiunion movies," she said. "Our hopes and dreams were crushed by the boss."
Mike Fadel, the executive vice president of the local 1199SEIU, said his goal is to organize all of Boston's hospitals. In most of the area's hospitals, nurses are union members, but most other employees are nonunionized. Boston Medical Center is an exception, with 1,200 workers represented by SEIU.
Jeff Toner, a partner with Dietz Associates Inc., a firm that says it provides nonpartisan communication services for healthcare organizations involved in organizing efforts, said the SEIU campaign is a good example of how unions have shifted tactics in recent years. "The unions are not focusing on the internal employee relations issues, they're focusing on community relations," he said. "They're indicting the reputations of the hospitals as providers of healthcare."
Rather than concentrating on workplace matters, like wages and benefits, Toner said, unions now usually attempt to win over a target organization by putting pressure on its individual board members and by calling attention to community issues, like ways to improve healthcare.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital in the Longwood Medical Area, has been a focus of SEIU activity since it disclosed plans to organize Boston hospitals last year. On his blog, hospital chief executive Paul Levy said he respects employees' rights to organize, but will not sign the type of agreement proposed by SEIU.
"In other parts of the country, hospitals that have taken similar positions to ours have found themselves subject to massive public relations attacks by unions," wrote Levy. "The object of these attacks seems to be to denigrate the reputation of the hospitals and to put pressure on volunteer boards of trustees and management to agree to the unions' organizing terms."
Levy wrote he does not believe a union would support the hospital in its treatment, research, or teaching missions, and that he would advise employees to reject a union.
Other hospitals were unwilling to discuss the union's plans to organize workers. A spokeswoman for Partners HealthCare Inc., the parent of Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals, declined to comment.
Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com. 