Newark clinic closure questioned
County supervisor to decide if appropriate actions were taken after staff walked out in protest
By Linh Tat, STAFF WRITER, THE ARGUS ONLINE
Article Last Updated: Friday, August 06, 2004 - 3:31:35 AM PST

NEWARK -- Conflicting information as to why the Alameda County Medical Center's Newark health clinic was shut down this week left one county supervisor questioning whether the actions taken were appropriate.

Supervisor Gail Steele said representatives of Cambio Health Solutions, consultants to the medical center, told her that only one employee remained after nurses walked out as part of a labor protest Tuesday.

But Michael Brown, a spokesman for the medical center, said one nurse manager, three physicians and three other workers remained on site after the walkout.

"If that was the case ... it probably wasn't necessary to close the clinic. ... It made sense (to close) if there was one employee in the clinic," Steele said.

The supervisor said she tried throughout the day Thursday to gain clarity from Cambio employees about the number of workers available after nurses walked out to protest proposed layoffs.

Steele -- whose district includes Newark, Union City, north Fremont, Hayward and unincorporated Sunol -- said she would not take a position on whether the medical center acted appropriately until she had more information.

But she said she found it "troubling" the staff could not keep the clinic open until the nurses returned from their protest. Sixteen employees -- nurses, clerical workers and a doctor -- walked out of the Newark Health Center on Tuesday morning to become part of a group of 150 health care workers in Oakland protesting the medical center's proposal to slash about 200 positions. Eight to 10 of those positions could come from Newark, workers say.

The nurses, who said they informed the medical center 24 hours in advance of both the walkout and their intention to return to work at 1 p.m., found themselves locked out of the Newark clinic when they returned that afternoon.

A sign announcing the clinic would close at 1 p.m. was posted on the door about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Brown said -- just as nurses were returning from Oakland.

"It's interesting...The clinic stayed open until the staff returned to work," said Bradley Cleveland, communications and research coordinator for the Service Employees International Union, which represents medical center workers.

The decision to close the clinic was made about 11:30 a.m. -- about 11/2hours after nurses walked out -- by Claude Watts Jr., the medical center's chief operating officer, in consultation with Chief Executive Officer Michael Burroughs, Brown said. It took the staff about another hour to reschedule appointments and to see some of the patients who were at the clinic before the facility closed, he said.

"The walkout by the employees was completely unauthorized and, from our point of view, illegal," Brown said. "You can't run a medical facility based on when someone tells you they'll return from an unauthorized work stoppage. The nurses abandoned their patients."

Union representatives, meanwhile, maintain that the medical center acted illegally by locking employees out after they had engaged in a protest that is within their contractual rights.

The nurses will be paid for the hours they were not allowed back inside, both Steele and Cleveland said.

The Newark facility was the only clinic that was shut down Tuesday, although nurses at the medical center's two other clinics -- in Hayward and Oakland -- also participated in the walkout.

"Newark, being (a smaller facility), having about 20 people walking off pretty much decimated the place," Brown said. Thirty people staff the facility on a normal work day, he said.

Burroughs issued a state-

ment Wednesday evening in which he characterized the walkout as a "high-risk activity that compromised patient care" and which "forced" the clinic to close.

Cleveland denied Burroughs' claim that employees who walked off the job put patients at risk.

"The problem (Burroughs) doesn't seem to understand is what he's doing by cutting staff ... The action of the (medical center) is what's compromising patient care," Cleveland said.