Pickets Target Kaleida

(buffalo.bizjournals.com)buffalo.bizjournals.com
September 19, 2008

PICKETS TARGET KALEIDA

By Tracey Drury
Business First

More than 3,000 union members who work at Kaleida Health hospitals and
throughout the community plan to conduct an informational picket Sept. 30
due to lack of progress in contract negotiations focusing on retirement
benefits.

Nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, medical technologists and others,
members of 1199 SEIU, will picket Kaleida's offices at the Larkin Building
at 600 Exchange Street, home to Kaleida's human resources and billing
departments.

Negotiations opened on March 3. Contracts covering all 12 SEIU bargaining
units with Kaleida expired May 31. Bruce Popper, SEIU vice president, says
there have been no talks in September and none are scheduled.

"We see this as really an unfulfilled agenda from the original Kaleida
merger in 2000," he says.
"While wage parity and benefits were addressed during negotiations in 2000
and 2005, the issue of pension parity remains. Workers in Kaleida
facilities are currently covered by four different pension plans."  Popper
says the plan proposed to Kaleida administrators would save the company
money over the next six to seven years.

The workers involved also include nurses and social workers at
approximately 50 Buffalo city schools.

In a prepared release, Kaleida Health said the company has negotiated in
good faith since the agreement expired in May, but called the union's
pension plan unaffordable.

"Our goal is to provide all of our employees the best compensation and
benefit package possible while allowing the organization to deliver the
highest quality of care by investing in the most state-of-the-art equipment
and facilities available. Unfortunately, what 1199SEIU is asking for is
irresponsible. They want to be part of a downstate pension plan that is
simply unaffordable," said the release.

In July, Kaleida Health completed negotiations with two of its unions, the
Communication Workers of America Local 1168 and the International Union of
Operating Engineers Local 17, which agreed to a new three-year master
contract covering 4,200 Kaleida Health employees.