MASSILLON, Ohio – Ann Wayt recently won a $2 million award against Affinity Medical Center after the hospital fired her and attempted to ruin her reputation for helping unionize nurses.

Many may think the size of the jury award the most important words in that sentence. For Wayt, a registered nurse for 38 years, one word stands out as the most important -- "reputation." She had always excelled at nursing, especially in patient care. The hospital had even admitted that, giving her its Nurse Excellence Award in 2008.

But that all changed in 2012, when Wayt and other nurses began organizing a union to improve working conditions, including those involving patient care. All of a sudden, the nurse, whose performance was once considered excellent, was now being recast as negligent. The hospital even sought to have her license revoked.

"I had taken my job as a nurse very seriously," she said. "For someone to make up charges against me like that wasn't something I could imagine anyone would do. It was wrong, and there was no way that I would sit back and just let it happen."

Community Health Systems, Inc., the Franklin, Tennessee-based company which owns Affinity, declined to comment for this article, including whether CHS would be appealing the jury's verdict.

"It is not our practice to comment on pending litigation," wrote Tomi Galin, senior vice president of corporate communications and marketing, in an email. "I hope you understand."

Wayt said the firing and reputation smear left her no option, but to fight back.

"Everything just crumbles around you with allegations like that," said Wayt, whom the hospital fired in September 2012, shortly after the nurses had voted-in a union.

That included the prospect of finding a new job. Though experienced and in an in-demand profession, Wayt said she couldn't get hired.

The National Labor Relations Board found the hospital had targeted Wayt because of her union organizing activities. A federal judge later ordered that she be reinstated to her job. She returned to work in February 2014.

But she wanted more than her job back. She wanted her good name back, so she sued Affinity for damaging her reputation. In February, a Stark County jury rendered a verdict in her favor. The $2 million award included the hospital having to pay Wayt $800,000 in compensatory damages for harming her reputation and another $750,000 in punitive damages. (Lawyer's fees are included in the remaining amount.)

More than two months later, the verdict is still reverberating throughout the organized labor community.

"This verdict made clear that workers can resist, fight back and win against even the most heavily funded attacks that some corporations carry out on a regular basis," said Michael Gillis, a spokesman for the Ohio AFL-CIO. "We have laws that protect workers, and justice was served in this case." 

Unions have lost membership in the last few decades as middle-class, blue-collar jobs, often not requiring advanced training or education, have disappeared. As that middle has fallen out --especially since the Great Recession -- low-paying jobs have proliferated. Unions are attempting to organize these workers, as was seen during the recent fast-food strikes and national Fight for 15 demonstrations calling for a $15 minimum wage.

But also as the middle has fallen out, job growth has remained strong among better-paying jobs, especially among professional ones, such as registered nursing. Unions are also focusing on organizing some of these professionals. For example, the AFL-CIO has recognized National Nurses United for having among the strongest growth in the labor organization, said Michelle Mahon, a registered nurse and national representative for the union, who is based in Northeast Ohio. This is the union that organized workers at Affinity, and fought along side Wayt to get her job back. The Affinity nurses are still working on getting their first contract.

Mahon said nurses haven't been this open to joining unions since HMOs became popular in the 1990s. She said now it is the many mergers and acquisitions that have become common in the medical industry that are motivating nurses, and the restructuring that often results when hospitals are sold. She said this industry trend has often led to staffing shortages and other issues that have directly affected patient care.

"This is creating a moral crisis in our profession and in our culture," Mahon said. "This is what we really believe is bringing nurses to stick together. They want to advocate for patients, stick up for their profession and seek health care justice."

She sees Wayt as embodying all of these good qualities. Wayt's dogged determination to stick up for her profession and her reputation serve as an inspiration to other nurses pushing back against employers bent on eroding basic nursing values, Mahon said.

Though organized labor is touting wins with the NLRB in federal court and in the local court as big union victories, jury members weren't focused on unions when they awarded Wayt $2 million, said her lawyer, Brian Zimmerman. After the trial, he asked jury members "if they had any feelings pro or against union activity." He said they were solely concerned that the hospital had treated her unfairly.

"I really tried to focus not so much on the union activity, but more that she had the legal right to organize," Zimmerman said, recounting how he had argued the case. "Here she is exercising her lawful right; and this hospital, who hated the unions, literally wanted to come and destroy her life."

Nurses Organize

Wayt had worked at what is now Affinity for about 25 years, when in the summer of 2012, she learned of the organizing campaign for nurses.

"Because it was a union for bedside nurses, I became very interested in it," she said.

The union was not only focused on wages and benefits, but working conditions. Many of the nurses were concerned about staffing issues at the hospital. The nurses were hoping that forming a union would address mandatory overtime and institute staffing rations based on the intensity of nursing care patients required.

The union asked to include Wayt's photo in a get-out-the-vote flier by the National Nurses Organizing Committee or NNOC.

"I said, 'sure,'" she said.

Her photo, with that of another nurse, was the largest one on the cover of the flier. Both were giving the thumbs up sign in voting for the union.

Next to the photo, this quote from Wayt, a nurse in the orthopedics unit, appeared, "We're voting yes for NNOC to work towards a contract that improves our standards, including staffing, on-call pay, wages and working conditions. This will put us in a position to more safely and effectively care for our patients."

The election was held Aug. 29, 2012. About two weeks later, management called Wayt in to discuss "a patient safety issue." When she got to the office, she found out how serious the allegations were. To her, none of them was even remotely true.

"The issues were actually falsification of documents and patient neglect and something about not following hospital policy," Wayt said.

 "I was so taken aback by the whole thing that I could barley respond to charges like that," she said "I was pretty much in shock. I was put on suspension until they further investigated it.

"On Sept. 26, 2012, I was actually terminated," Wayt said.

Wayt said she knew such baseless charges would never stick. She was a long-term employee, and the hospital – through awards and recognition – had acknowledged her as a high-performing professional.

Wayt was determined to fight. She was correctly confident in knowing that she would prevail. But what Wayt had not accounted for was the wheels of justice moving ever so slowly. It would be about 1 ½ years before she would get her job back. She couldn't find other work. Her husband was retired. Wayt would suffer both financial and emotional strain. The fact that her employer would seek to obliterate her reputation, even to the point of unsuccessfully trying to get her license revoked, still stung.

"Everything feels like it is just going to collapse on you," she said. "You work for many years, and then everything is gone!"

"Without my husband's support and my faith in God, I think I would have shriveled up," Wayt said.

Feb. 13, 2014 Wayt returned to work. She didn't know what to expect.

"Everyone knew that it was a form of retaliation and intimidation (on the part of Affinity)," she said of her firing. "That was to let everyone know that, 'We don't want anyone siding with the union. They were trying to suppress their voices.'"

But Mahon, of the nurses' union, said the more Wayt and the union fought back, the less intimidated many nurses became.

"Nurses at Affinity became more united and stronger than ever," she said. "They wanted to have the ability to advocate for their patients. They saw what happened to Ann, and they never wanted this to happen to another person ever again."

On her first day back at work, some of Wayt's colleagues were waiting to greet her outside of the hospital. There was applause, roses and affirmations, including this one on a banner from the union:

"Welcome Home Ann. RN Hero."

A few weeks later, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, had "A Tribute to Ann Wayt" included in the Congressional Record. He told of her professionalism and her right to speak up for safer working conditions.

Brown said recently why he believed it had been important to mark Wayt's return to work with such a tribute.

"Workers should never be fired for fighting for a voice at work," he wrote in an email. "Ann Wayt is a champion for workers' rights – including the right to form a union. She is the face for nurses everywhere who provide critical medical care and emotional support for their patients. These nurses deserve to have their concerns heard."

Wayt had gotten her job back. Now it was time for the hospital to pay for the campaign set on ruining her reputation.

People who are harmed in some way usually sue for something tangible, such as getting medical bills paid or collecting back wages, said her lawyer, Zimmerman. A federal judge had already ordered her job and back wages restored.

"My entire case was built around what is the value of a person's reputation," he said. "One of things that I would have to argue was that a lot of time you and I think about our reputation now; but what is our reputation going forward? How do you put a value on all of that? Is that worth $10 a day? Is that worth $20 a day?"

Zimmerman said cases like these, by their nature, aren't the easiest to win. In the 1990s, he won a reputation-focused case involving a high school principal. Because of all to the appeals, that case lasted 13 years, Zimmerman said.

He said Wayt was the ideal plaintiff.

"She had a fabulous reputation for more than three decades," he said.

The verdict

The trial at the Stark County courthouse in Canton, which lasted about two weeks was now over. The jury had just begun deliberating. Wayt turned to Zimmerman.

"She said, 'what should I expect now?'" he said.  "I said, 'If the jury comes back in an hour or two hours, that is most likely a bad sign.'"

They had so many questions to consider in awarding damages. That would take time.

Zimmerman felt confident, but cautious.

He believed he had done a good job of convincing the jury that Affinity had wronged Wayt.

"It was shocking the way they treated this poor lady," he said. "It was almost like a mob mentality, where certain administrators at the hospital got together and they just quickly made these false statements about her. Because they were acting so hastily, they left breadcrumbs that I was able to pick up and put together and prove exactly what they had done."

For example, a hospital administrator said that Wayt had refused to accept a patient from the emergency room.

"That is a horrible offense for a nurse to be charged with," Zimmerman said.

When he asked the administrator who had told her about Wayt's alleged actions, the administrator named a hospital employee.

"I took that person's deposition, and she said, 'I never said that!'" Zimmerman said.

As they awaited the jury's decision, Zimmerman also remembered the last pre-trial meeting.

"I had made a demand of $750,000 (in punitive damages)," he said. "Basically, the hospital laughed at me; and told the judge that there were no damages, and that the most that they would ever pay would be $10,000."

Both plaintiff and lawyer continued to wait. Now, the jury had been out an hour.

"Then the bailiff stuck her head out of the court room and said, 'We have a verdict,'" Zimmerman said.

"I was somewhat angry," he said. "I was convinced we were going to have a bad verdict."

He was wrong. The jury had unanimously ruled in Wayt's favor. The plaintiff had basically gotten everything she had asked for.

Wayt burst into tears. They were tears of victory.

"This black cloud had been over her for a long time," Zimmerman said. "There was a sense of justice. She truly had her name cleared."

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2015/04/nurse_ann_wayt_wins_2_million.html#incart_river