VACATIONS EVERYONE
— Council Leader John Lichak meets with Stacy
Taylor, a steward at the Capital District Psychiatric
Center, to discuss the nurses' vacation agreement. The
vacation agreement provides staff with annual vacations
despite short-staffing, and is one example of the
improved relationship between the union and management.
— Photo by Deborah A. Miles
Member
meetings strengthen L-M talks
Psych
Center teamwork gets results
By DEBORAH A. MILES
When management at the Capital District Psychiatric
Center (CDPC) took an independent role in trying to
remedy staffing problems, it took the union to make them
realize that teamwork would be a better course of action.
By being persistent and writing letters, John Lichak,
Division 231 council leader, finally broke the wall of
silence with management that had been a barrier to the
staff.
But Lichak will be the first to tell you that success
doesn’t happen overnight.
More than two years ago, nurses and staff lost vacation
time because management transferred some nurses to
non-line positions, leaving the units extremely
short-staffed.
“People couldn’t put-in for time off, because
they were needed on the units,” Lichak said.
“We sat down with PEF associate counsel Elizabeth
Hough and field representative Allan Lahoff and came up
with an agreement to guarantee nurses a two-week annual
vacation.
“It took a year to resolve this,” he said.
“Now requests for vacations are made a year in
advance.”
Talking gets
results
That situation and the way it was handled encouraged
management to open the lines of communication.
“The biggest success I’ve had with management
is communication,” Lichak said. “Now, we can
sit down together, address the facts and come-up with
positive ways to remedy problems. Management wasn’t
like that in the past.”
Lichak believes in involving his membership. He schedules
regular meetings and the agenda is open to all members so
they can talk about their issues. They discuss problems,
devise solutions and present them at labor-management
meetings.
“Regular meetings are important. It shows the
membership you are there for them,” he said.
“We actually address the issues and give people
copies of the L-M minutes.”
Involving members pays off
Lichak said involvement of the membership is another key
element in working with management.
Through the union’s suggestion, a nurses’
advisory committee was formed at CDPC to address
mandatory overtime and other problems. The nurses came up
with a plan that eventually resulted in a memorandum of
understanding concerning overtime.
But short-staffing remains an issue at CDPC. In order to
treat all the clients, management consolidated
treatments. Patients and staff now go to one central
area.
Clients, who were once banned from leaving their units,
are able to go to other parts of the facility for group
counseling, even though they may cause harm to themselves
or someone else.
“You don’t know who you will get in your group
or who will be volatile,” Lichak said.
The low staffing levels also leave little time for nurses
to do their daily documentation. Lichak said management
realizes the need to hire more staff.
“Management isn’t able to hire anybody right
now, so they are looking to the union for ways to help.
But our mutual goal is to get more staff,” he said.
Chris Brady, PEF Executive Board representative for
members at CDPC, applauded Lichak’s skill and
dedication to finding ways to get management to listen.
“He’s not their favorite child, and we
don’t want him to be,” Brady said. “But he
has developed a very good working relationship with
management at this point, and has done an excellent job
pulling together the membership.”
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