PRINCETON — A hearing on a federal court order requiring Bluefield Regional Medical Center (BRMC) to stop blocking a democratic vote by nurses, recognize the nurses’ right to join a union and bargain with them for a first collective bargaining agreement began In Princeton Monday morning.

The hearing was scheduled after the hospital, along with Greenbrier Valley Medical Center (GVMC) in Ronceverte, received the judicial mandate related to the hospitals’ alleged practices from the United States 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on July 18.

On Monday, legal representation from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), BRMC and hospital’s parent company Community Health Systems (CHS), met in front of Eleanor Laws, administrative law judge for the NLRB in the conference room of a Princeton hotel.

On July 12, the NLRB found merit to a number of charges brought by NNOC/NNU relating to “more recent and ongoing unlawful conduct” by BRMC and GVMC.

According to press release from the union at that time, the NLRB “will prosecute both hospitals and parent company, CHS, if they do not remedy the violations.” Tennessee-based CHS is the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, reporting $1.5 billion in profits over the last five years.

“We are happy that the NLRB is holding our employer accountable to the law and is ordering them to rescind the unlawful changes they’ve made,” said Tracey Jesse, registered nurse at BRMC, after the finding. “It is disappointing that such extreme measures must be taken especially when we are using our labor rights to protect our patients.”

CHS’ refusal to address nurses’ widespread concerns about patient safety at both BRMC and GVMC was the driving force that galvanized RNs to organize and win representation with NNOC/NNU in August of 2012, union officials said in the press release. Since that time CHS has engaged in rampant illegal labor practices in a wide-scale attempt to weaken support for the union and forestall reaching initial collective bargaining agreements.

At that time, BRMC released this statement: “Bluefield Regional Medical Center intends to vigorously contest this determination by the National Labor Relations Board General Counsel. This is an administrative, legal matter and will have no impact on our daily operations. Patients can continue to count on us for safe, quality care.”

The NLRB found the following violations at BRMC and is seeking the remedies described below, according to union representatives:

• BRMC, together with CHS, unlawfully fired all of the Certified RN Anesthetists (CRNAs) and restructured the anesthesia department under the management of a subcontractor.
• That BRMC restore its anesthesia department and reinstate the nurses performing that work, and repay them for any consequential damages incurred, including all search for work and work related expenses.
• BRMC unlawfully delayed a wage increase under the pretext of blaming them for voting for union representation.
• BRMC unlawfully made changes to paid time off, mandatory overtime and staffing policies and refused to provide information the union was entitled to receive in representing nurses.
• That BRMC rescind these unlawful changes to nurses’ terms of employment, reimburse the nurses for losses incurred, and provide the union the information it has refused to furnish.

Timothy W. Mearns, attorney for the NLRB, outlined many of the allegations made by BRMC nurses pertaining to treatment by the hospital’s administration because of union activities, which began in 2012 after nurses voted to join the nurses’ union, NNU.

Mearns said the nurses’ allegations include harassment, intimidation, accusations of disruptive behavior as well as rudeness to patients.

Union supporters were targeted, he said,

Micah Berul, legal counsel for the NNOC, told Laws Monday that the hearing is “quite a historic proceeding,” and was happening four years after the hospital engaged in tactics to bar the union, adding that it is a “corporate” strategy with the parent company used in other hospitals.

“They are the source of the ongoing … unlawful conduct,” he said. “They make a farce of the National Labor Relations Act.”

Brenda Meadwell, RN in the OB-GYN department at BRMC, is a union member and is on the negotiating and bargaining committee for the union.

Mearns called her to testify Monday afternoon as several other witnesses were sequestered from attending the hearing until they were called.

Meadwell said after the union vote was taken in 2012, she and other members were involved in “actions,” which included raising awareness of the staffing and patient care issues of the hospital with the BRMC administration and the community.

Those issues included a shortage of nurses that led to a nurse-to-patient ratio deficit and having to work longer than their scheduled 12-hour shifts.

“We passed out flyers,” she said, adding she also kept union members updated on contract negotiations between the NNU and the hospital, which were engaged in trying to reach the hospital’s first collective bargaining agreement.

Meadwell said union members initially met in a conference room at the hospital.

But when they went to the room to hold another meeting, “we were locked out.”

When one of the supervisors showed up, she said, they asked him to open the door and he would not.

“He said our meeting was cancelled and he would not let us in,” she said, adding that he told them he was just “the messenger.”

The reason given for not being able to use the room was the hospital’s “solicitation policy,” she said. A solicitation, or non-solicitation, policy is a company’s rules regarding distribution of materials or any solicitations during work hours and in work areas.

According to the NLRB’s website, a solicitation policy should not apply to union organizing activities that don’t interfere with employees’ work.

Union members then tried to reserve a table in the BRMC cafeteria with an email to an administrator, but were denied that request as well, she said, and told access could not be granted “for this purpose … refer to your solicitation and distribution policy.”

Meadwell said the group was also asked to leave a grassy area near the entrance to BRMC when they held a press conference to air issues at the hospital.

Another incident involved an “informational picket,” she said, when union members gathered in a grassy area across the street from the hospital with signs related to ongoing problems at BRMC.

But a representative from the hospital drove by and told them they were on hospital property and could not picket there, prompting the group to move closer to the pavement, she said.

Meadwell said that in May 2013 she and other union members were, on their own time, passing out flyers near the loading dock at the hospital on evening where nurses enter for work and leave work.

After speaking to about 15 to 20 nurses when they were not on company time, she said, a supervisor came out and told them to leave, again citing the no solicitation policy.

“We decided then to go inside the hospital and put flyers” in the nurses’ locker area, she said.

“A security officer walked up to us and he told us that he was just doing his job but he had to tell us we couldn’t be there doing what we were doing. We were essentially kicked out.”

The hearing was scheduled to continue today.

A hearing related to Greenbrier Valley Medical Center is scheduled to start Sept. 19.

— Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com