Legislators bring hope to members at Pilgrim PC
By SHERRY HALBROOK
Hundreds of PEF members and other staff were hurt last year at Pilgrim
Psychiatric Center in West Brentwood on Long Island, and they want the violence
to stop. They also want an end to the toxic work environment created by
management that adds insult to their risk of physical injury on the job.
They found a concerned and responsive audience for their issues when state
Assembly Members Peter Rivera (D-Bronx) and Phil Ramos, (D-Suffolk County)
visited the center in early August at the request of PEF Vice President Pat
Baker, the union’s labor-management chair for the state Office of Mental Health.
Rivera chairs the state Assembly Committee on Mental Health and Ramos, who
worked at Pilgrim in the 1970s, now represents that district in the state
Legislature.
After hearing about the dual problems of violence and management abuse, Rivera
and Ramos announced they would establish a joint “commission” to address the
employees’ complaints of management intimidation, inflexibility and other
abuses. The lawmakers also said they would ask the Suffolk County district
attorney and law enforcement officials to meet with the unions and management at
Pilgrim to address the violence there.
“Our members were very happy to see these legislators here. We feel encouraged
that things could change,” said PEF Division 233 Council Leader Rosario (Rusty)
Pascual, an intensive case manager at Pilgrim.
The lawmakers toured the facility, attended a union meeting with the members,
joined in a news conference about what they had learned, and then met with
Pilgrim Executive Director Dean Weinstock.
CALL
FOR CHANGE — PEF leaders Rosario Pascual, Pat Baker, Assembly Member Peter
Rivera, Dee Dodson of PEF and Assembly Member Phil Ramos tell the press of
violence and intimidation at Pilgrim PC. — Photos by Jonathan Gittens
Management’s way or else
Some of PEF’s more than 580 members at Pilgrim wore stickers
that said, “Respect us; Hear us.” Others wore PEF T-shirts with a picture of
actor John Wayne and the words: “We won’t back down, Pilgrim.”
At their private union meeting with Rivera and Ramos, the members related a long
list of concerns including short staffing, mandatory and coerced “volunteering”
for overtime, a pervasive system of harassment and intimidation of staff, abuse
of the disciplinary process and a hostile and inflexible management approach
that “pollutes the atmosphere.”
They said management insisted employees work overtime for a visit earlier this
year by the new state mental health commissioner, Michael Hogan. The members
said, when they claimed those hours on their timesheets, the time was erased by
management, which refused to pay it.
Rivera told reporters at the news conference he found “a tremendous amount of
employee unrest” at Pilgrim. He cited reports of “outpatient nurses being
mandated to do inpatient work ... and people being (threatened with) fines,
$1,000 or $2,000” if they refuse to “volunteer” to work overtime. “If people
don’t do mandated overtime ... they may get fired,” Rivera said.
“Our members at Pilgrim have been so intimidated, they believed the director
could do anything he wanted to them, and nobody cared,” Baker said. “OMH turns a
blind eye to what goes on at the facility level. When it comes to workplace
violence, mandatory overtime or labor-management, they think all they have to do
is stonewall us.”
Assaults
common
Pilgrim logged 511 reports of staff getting hurt on the job in 2006, and 331 of
those reports (65 percent) involved interactions with patients, according to
data gathered by OMH and presented at a March symposium on efforts to build a
“Safe and Therapeutic Environment” at the agency. On average, statewide, 80
percent of staff injuries involving patients resulted from patient assaults on
staff or occurred when staff tried to restrain patients who were out of control.
On-the-job injuries cost Pilgrim 6,163 staff days in 2006 — the equivalent of
losing 29 staff for the entire year.
The tab for workers’ compensation and related medical costs at Pilgrim totaled
nearly $3.8 million in 2006, and more than $2 million of that was for
assault-related injuries.
Baker said, “Staff injuries have become a vicious cycle at Pilgrim, because
employees who are seriously hurt have to take time off to recover and that just
adds to the problems of short staffing and mandatory overtime, especially for
our nurses. And we know that not having enough staff, and making people work
extra shifts when they are already exhausted, or fill in on units where they
don’t know the patients, just raises the chances of someone getting hurt.”
“When we recently surveyed our members at Pilgrim, more than 65 percent said
they had been directly affected by workplace violence. And 81 percent of those
responding said they did not feel protected by the center’s violence-prevention
policies,” said PEF Region 12 Coordinator Doris Dodson.
“The survey showed nearly every one of our members has been injured or knows a
co-worker who was injured by the violence here,” Pascual said. “It’s a terrible
strain and worry for everyone.”
Ramos told reporters he was disappointed to see so many problems were just as
bad or worse today than they were when he worked at Pilgrim.
“I’ve taken a lot of punches,” Ramos said of his years there as a mental health
therapy aide.
Hope for the future
Baker said Rivera and Ramos told her they would include representatives of the
employee unions, patient advocates and management on a commission to review and
address the employees’ issues with management. A neutral “third party” will head
the group, she said.
Rivera and Ramos made a commitment to follow up and make sure that this
mechanism was functional, and not just lip service.
“Rest assured, we will stand behind you and bring resolution to this situation,”
Rivera told the PEF members.
“We are very grateful for the strong interest they take in the safety of both
patients and staff,” Baker said.
“Assembly Member Ramos worked here, and he has also been a New York City police
officer, so he understands the culture and the environment. He marched with our
members and CSEA (the Civil Service Employees Association) when they protested
these poor working conditions (on July 31),” Baker said.
“Assembly Member Rivera has also visited psychiatric centers in the Bronx and in
Albany this year at our request, because they also have very high injury rates.
And he has brought the DAs to meet with our members,” Baker added.
“Their visit has started to build the trust of our members in the union and that
possibly some things can change for the better,” Pascual said.