Labor Board Trial Over Meadowlands Hospital Violations Begins: Hospital Agrees to Settle Some Issues
Health Professionals and Allied Employees, AFT/AFL-CIO
1110 Kinderkamack Road
Emerson NJ 07630
201-262-5005
For Immediate Release: December 10, 2013
Contact: Jeanne Otersen (201)280-9279
As the National Labor Relations Board Trial over labor law violations at Meadowlands Hospital began in Newark, a partial settlement agreement was reached resolving some of the charges brought against Meadowlands Hospital and Medical Center (MHMC). Hospital owners, MHA LLC, agreed in the settlement to abide by a list of labor laws that the union representing 350 hospital employees, the Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE), charged had been violated.
The NLRB had found merit in the charges, and scheduled a trial before an Administrative Law Judge, which started on December 10. The settlement represents just a portion of charges that were consolidated into a complaint filed by the NLRB against MHMC.
Under the settlements, MHMC must post in the workplace and send notices to all employees that:
- MHMC will not interfere with the rights of employees to form or join a union;
- MHMC will not fail to schedule grievances or arbitrations as required by law;
- MHMC will not fail to make funds available for payment of medical claims;
- MHMC will not fail to process employees’ claims for prescription drugs;
- MHMC will not fail to provide HPAE (the Union) with information needed to bargain;
- MHMC will not threaten to discipline or discharge union members for engaging in Union activities;
- MHMC will not post security guards to watch union representatives while in the hospital;
- MHMC will bargain in good faith over security cameras and will not create the false impression that management is using cameras to watch and listen to union activities;
- MHMC will not seek reimbursement of underpayments of health insurance premiums.
The settlement agreement leaves a number of serious issues still to be decided at Trial, including charges that MHMC violated labor law by:
- Improper selection of employees to be laid-off;
- Implementing a substantially inferior medical plan that was not comparable to former medical plans;
- Refusing to make contributions to employees 401(K) plans;
- Refusing to apply the collective bargaining agreement to ‘nurse interns’;
- Paying minimum wage to ‘nurse interns’
The trial, in Newark, is scheduled from December 10, 11 and 12 and will continue in January.