CWA 1180 - Worksite Organizing

1,200 Coordinating Managers join Local 1180

Attention Coordinating Managers A & B —
First Union Meeting

Hear a union orientation, get a new member packet, sign up for benefits & discuss workplace concerns

Wednesday, June 14
6 p.m.
SEIU Local 32BJ
101 Av. of the Americas, just north of Canal St. (take the 1, A, C, or E to Canal St.)

RSVP to 212-331-0959, 24 hours a day

May 2006

On May 15, Local 1180 won a dispute with the city over some 1,200 Coordinating Managers who work for the Health and Hospitals Corporation. The Office of Collective Bargaining’s certification board ruled that the vast majority of workers in this title are eligible for collective bargaining and can immediately join the ranks of Local 1180. The victory was the culmination of a 12-year process.

“As a Coordinating Manager, I think it’s great to finally have union representation,” said Ted Wright, who has worked at Bellevue Hospital since 1984 and in the Coordinating Manager title since 2001. “The immediate impact will be compensation for any hours we work outside of our regular tour of duty.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome the Coordinating Managers into our union,” said Local 1180 president Arthur Cheliotes. “The union has a proud history of defending workers’ rights, fighting for better pay and dignity on the job, and engaging in the important social issues of our day. We look forward to helping our new members improve their working lives.”

The union has scheduled a meeting for June 14, 6 p.m., at SEIU Local 32BJ, 101 Avenue of the Americas, just north of Canal Street. There, Coordinating Managers will receive an orientation about the union, sign up for union benefits, and have the opportunity to ask questions and share priorities for upcoming contract negotiations.

Coordinating Managers (CMs) are engaged in supervisory or administrative work at the city’s 10 hospitals, five treatment centers, four long-term care facilities, a home health care agency, more than 80 community health clinics, and at Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) headquarters.

A long road

Local 1180 first filed a petition with the Board of Certification seeking to represent CMs on May 4, 1994. HHC management insisted that CMs should be designated as managerial or confidential, while the union argued that few CMs had final say over budgets or policy and so deserved union representation. Coordinating Managers filled out surveys in which they described their daily jobs in detail. Then Local 1180 met with the city’s Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB) and HHC officials in a lengthy series of conferences to determine which of these workers were eligible for union representation and which were not. In the end, OCB found that only 18 CMs merited classification as managers and only 35 should be designated as confidential employees. Another 100 or so CMs engaging in direct patient care or working as computer technicians may be reclassified into more appropriate city titles. All the rest have now become members of Local 1180.

Local 1180 officers will meet on May 26 with Ann Rozakis, HHC’s director of labor relations, to discuss how to handle the transition, including when union dues will start to be deducted and when CMs will switch their benefits from the Management Welfare Fund to the union plan.

One thing will change immediately, says Local 1180 vice president Linda Jenkins: unionized CMs will no longer have to work nights and weekends without pay. For every hour over their regular work week, CMs will now receive comp time or overtime pay. And they now have access to a grievance procedure to address unfair treatment on the job. “This decision was long awaited and much anticipated,” says Jenkins. “We’re relieved and pleased that it’s finally been resolved, and we look forward to representing and working with the CMs to address their important workplace issues.”

With the addition of the CMs, Local 1180 will now have more than 9,000 members.

Note: Benefits for CMs will switch over from the management plan to the union plan on August 1. For a comparison of benefits under the old management plan and the new union plan, click here.

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