Message from the President

Happy New Year! I promise that a lot has been going on behind the scenes of Local 5058. That being said, as a local executive board (LEB), we realize that many people want to know more about what’s happening. One of our New Year’s resolutions is to improve communication with the membership. Some of our members may remember The Beacon from years ago as a newsletter that was mailed to each member from time to time. We are restarting it as a monthly electronic newsletter that will be posted to our private union Facebook group and emailed to everyone. Our goal is to tell all of you about some of what we have been working on and what we will have coming up, and to remind you of your legal and contractual rights and how we can help you protect them.

One of HMH’s more recent hobbies is to call itself a high-reliability organization (HRO). An HRO is supposed to view errors and abnormalities as symptoms of a larger problem with the system, to value a diversity of experience and opinions, to closely monitor conditions to ensure safety, and to defer to frontline expertise. It’s fair to say that HMH and its leaders do not take these values seriously. They have no interest in hearing diverse opinions or deferring to our expertise, they do an embarrassing job of ensuring safety for us and our patients, and they like to blame individuals when things go wrong rather than consider the serious problems in the system that they have created. For Bob Garrett and friends, HRO is a convenient buzzword to get some good PR, rather than a description of their actual approach to running the place. Management has failed us in a lot of ways lately, some big and some small, some by accident and some on purpose.

That leaves it to us to be a High Reliability Union™, to fight back and do what we can to make positive change. Sometimes, change comes through the slow daily work of holding our managers accountable to respect us and our rights under the contract and the law. But sometimes, change strikes like a lightning bolt. Our contract expires in September, and we will want to make a lot of change all at once. I don’t plan to let them keep failing us in the same ways under the next contract. But I’m going to need your help, because without you I’m just one guy. Our strength as a union is in our unity and solidarity—when we act like we are all in this together, because we are. That solidarity is what scares management most, because if we speak with one voice when we say enough is enough, when we threaten to withhold our labor if they don’t take us seriously, they have to listen, and they have to get serious about fixing the problems they have created.

2025 Contract Negotiations

On that note, our contract expires on Monday, September 8, 2025. On January 9th, the LEB met to discuss our strategic plan for negotiations. We have already started early work on contract proposals, but we want everyone’s input. The best way for us to know what your priorities are for a new contract is for you to tell us! In the coming weeks, we’ll be sending out a membership bargaining survey to gather your input. Your feedback is crucial in shaping our priorities at the bargaining table, so keep an eye out for it in February!

Also, our union comrades at SOMC (HPAE Local 5138) expect to start their contract negotiations in February. Their contract expires on April 30th. Please remember to show them support whenever possible. They have faced the same nonsense from HMH that we have, including HMH’s refusal to discuss increases to on-call pay and differentials without significant givebacks from us. Local 5138’s successes are our successes, and their work at the bargaining table will set the tone for us in a few months.

Upcoming Union Meetings

We will be having General Membership Meetings in person on February 12, 2025 at 5p and 8p at Glendola Fire Company in Belmar. Dinner will be served. All union members are welcome – bring some coworkers! Also, our annual Local 5058 Education Day will be Wednesday, May 7th. There will be a program including CEUs, so it will qualify for a paid conference day per our contract for full and part timers. Keep it in mind when figuring out your work schedule for May. Here’s a full list of Rep and General Membership meetings coming up between now and July:

All members are welcome at any meeting! This is an excellent opportunity to stay informed, ask questions, and get involved in the direction of our union. We are actively looking for members to represent their departments as part of the Contract Action Team (CAT). With negotiations coming up this year, CAT plays a critical role in ensuring that our collective bargaining efforts are effective. Your involvement can make a significant difference as we approach negotiations!

Around the Hospital

Ackerman 3 East — With the opening of the new cath lab on NW4, for a while the nurses caring for post- cath patients on 3 east asked what would happen to them, and they were basically told nothing would change. However, it turns out that 3 east will essentially become a med/surg/tele unit like Booker 3, and the nurses were told they could stay or choose another unit to work on, with no option to transfer for a year if they don’t like their new position. No transferring from a new position for a year is the usual rule, but in this case, we didn’t like the sound of that. After we repeatedly badgered management about this, they agreed that the nurses would not have to wait a year to transfer if they don’t like their new situation. It says something about how much they care that it took so much effort to get them to agree to this simple request. But it is important to remember that, in any situation where there is a significant change to our working conditions, we have the right to demand a meeting with management to bargain over the effects of the change on our members.

Booker 3 — Speaking of Booker 3, management informed us that they are going to try a “virtual nursing” program there, possibly starting in March. This will have nurses interacting with patients virtually to help with some aspects of managing patient care. We were assured that this would be an added resource with no decrease in staffing by our members on the unit. If anyone notices problems with this new program, let us know.

Shore Care — For about a year, we have been seeing significant changes to the way Shore Care nurses are being used at JSUMC. First, they became a per diem HMH network float pool. Now, they are hiring full-time and part-time nurses into Shore Care. We are still assessing how this will work and the effects this will have on us. Some things to know: the contract is clear that we have preference for all work time over non-contracted agency nurses. But recently, management started giving Shore Care preference over our members signed up for voluntary on-call. Strange… they had agreed in writing that they wouldn’t do that, and had even reimbursed our members who signed up for VOC for lost pay when Shore Care nurses were brought in to work instead of them. When we asked Ellen Angelo about this at our January labor-management meeting, she apologized for previously paying our on- call members… we told her not to apologize, or at least not for that. We can think of other things management should apologize for.

We have filed a grievance over this contract violation, and it is likely that we will win in the end, but it is unclear how long that will take. For now, we encourage anyone signed up via VOC to track times you haven’t been called in and a Shore Care nurse has worked instead. Also, remember that the contract gives us bumping rights over all non-contracted agency with 24 hours’ notice. It also requires that management post union positions if they are using agency nurses, and we are going to have to hold them to that.

Contract & Legal Highlights

In the United States, what is the most expensive form of theft? Is it burglary? Grand theft auto? Nope – it’s wage theft, when employers don’t pay employees the wages they are owed. According to a 2014 study by the Economic Policy Institute, the loss to working people is huge:

Our contract (Article 3.02, page 5) says the hospital must pay us for all time spent doing training or education that is required for the job. Both we and management should make an effort to complete the required training during regularly scheduled work time, but if this is not possible, they have to pay us to do the work on our own time, even if we have to do it at home. This applies to all required training, including classes like ACLS and BLS, annual regulatory learning modules, HRO classes, etc.

It isn’t just our contract that says we are to be paid for any required work – it’s the law. Any work you do is to be on the clock. That includes when you first come to work, or when you stay late to finish your charting. Also, for each shift of at least 8 hours, we are entitled to a 30-minute meal break. This is automatically deducted from our paychecks—but it should only be unpaid if you had at least 30 uninterrupted minutes of break time. If you don’t take a meal break or you were required to do work during your “break,” whether it’s to answer your phone, check on a patient, or talk to a visitor, you should be paid for that time. Some departments use a missed lunch form—you can find a copy on our member’s only Facebook group or on the local 5058 page at hpae.org. Bob Garrett wouldn’t let you get away with stealing money out of his pocket, and he has an easier job and much deeper pockets than we do. Don’t let him steal your hard-earned money.

Recent News from the HMH C-Suite

CEO Unveils Bold New Plan To Undo Damage From Last Year’s Bold New Plan

Edison—Saying it would mark a significant change in the company’s direction, Hackensack Meridian Health CEO Bob Garrett announced Monday a bold new plan that was evidently intended to undo the havoc caused by last year’s bold new plan… (See more from the original article at thonion.com)