A nurse in one hospital might be a supervisor and in another hospital she might not be.

So I feel that overall, it would be best for the Labor Board to handle this problem on a case-by-case basis, as it has very successfully throughout all of the facets of our industrial life.

Mr. HARDY. May I introduce next, Senator, Mike McDermott, Local 399, Hospital Workers in Los Angeles.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Senator Williams and Senator Taft, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I would like to state that in 1967, the NLRB extended the rights and protections of the National Labor Relations Act to employees of proprietary hospitals, by assuming jurisdiction over the proprietary hospital industry. These rights and protections enjoyed by workers in proprietary hospitals are not enjoyed by workers in nonprofit hospitals.

H.R. 11357 is designed to extend the protection of the National Labor Relations Act to employees of nonprofit hospitals. A great inequity has existed for 25 years.

On December 13, 1971, hearings were held in Los Angeles by the House of Representatives Special Subcommittee on Labor on H.R. 11357. Rev. John Simmons, the administrator of the Pacoima Memorial Lutheran Hospital, in his testimony in support of H.R. 11357, stated:

The difference between a profit and a nonprofit hospital is only in the distribution of any profits generated by the hospital. He went on to say, "Consequently, if all hospitals are to serve the public health care needs, they must be governed by a public policy which is evenhanded."

Tax dollars have been given to build most nonprofit community hospitals under Hill Burton Medicare and Medic Aid pay for hospital care services rendered to citizens. This is tax money. Therefore, public policy, under Taft Hartley, should apply equally to profit and nonprofit hospitals.

I call the committee's attention to the distinction between nonprofit and proprietary hospitals. The only difference is the type of ownership and tax loopholes. The service to the community is the basic purpose of both proprietary and nonprofit hospitals and they perform this service in near identical fashion:

The proprietary hospital has a board of directors controlling operations of the hospital.

The nonprofit hospital has a board of directors controlling operations of the hospital.

The proprietary hospital belongs to an employers' association (Southern California Hospital Council.)

The proprietary hospital employs registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, nurses aides, orderlies, licensed technicians, dietary, housekeeping and maintenance employees. The nonprofit hospital employees have the identical classifications of employees.

Senator TAFT. Are public hospitals members of that association? Are county hospitals members?

Mr. HARDY. No.

They get a wage survey called Griffin-Hagen which is given to county hospitals.

Senator TAFT. In my community, they are all members of the same hospital association.

Mr. HARDY. I do not think under State law, that they can belong to these associations. But they do exchange wage information. They

make a wage survey, and it is turned over to the county for their personnel office.

Mr. GEFFNER. Senator, in Los Angeles County, the county hospital-it is determined under the prevailing wage ordinance or charter so that prevailing salaries in the community then become almost automatically the prevailing wages in the county and in the public hospitals.

Senator TAFT. I did not mean to interrupt. Go ahead, please.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. The proprietary hospital required verification of medical insurance from incoming patients.

The nonprofit hospital required verification of medical insurance from incoming patients.

The charges from semiprivate rooms and intensive care are the same for both proprietary and nonprofit hospitals.

There are two basic distinctions that can be made between proprietary and nonprofit hospitals:

Employees working for a proprietary hospital are covered by the act and are under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.

Employees of nonprofit hospitals are specifically exempted from the act and held outside the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.

Proprietary hospitals pay taxes on their income. Nonprofit hospitals do not pay taxes on their income.

For many years, the Queen of Angels Hospital functioned as a nonprofit hospital and as such, its employees were precluded from the opportunity to gain union representation through the office of the NLRB.

Recently, it was sold and became a proprietary hospital. Within a few weeks thereafter, the employees of the hospital flocked to the union requesting representation. By the fortune of a sale, these employees were enfranchised with rights hitherto denied them. By what rationalization should the rights and responsibilities of both the employers and the employees be shifted because of a mere shift in the type of ownership?

There have also been instances of proprietary hospitals becoming nonprofit hospitals. This can happen without any visible signs. The employees may not even be aware of this change in status. The patients in the beds would not be aware. There would be no change in any function, service, or cost to the patients. The only difference would be a nondiscernible change in the type of ownership.

In recent years, workers of numerous nonprofit hospitals throughout the southern California area have approached local 399 requesting representation:

Pomona Valley Community Hospital, Intercommunity Hospital, St. Bernadines Hospital, San Pedro Community Hospital, San Bernardino Community Hospital, St. Johns Hospital, Daniel Freeman Hospital, Ingleside Mental Hospital, to mention only a few.

In each instance the union notified the hospital that it represented a majority of the employees. In every instance the hospital either ignored the request for recognition or informed us quite candidly that they were not legally obligated to recognize the union or to consent to an election.

We were confronted with only two options: to abandon the employees, or to strike. One hospital stated that it did not doubt that the union represented a majority of its employees, but under no circumstances would it recognize the union or consent to an election.

There have been hospital strikes in southern California and, except for one hospital, the issue was recognition. We recognize a hospital is vital to the community. In each instance of a strike, the union notified the Department of Public Health that a strike was imminent.

Relatives of patients were notified of the coming strike so there would be ample opportunity to transfer patients to other hospitals. The union even offered to pay ambulance charges so that patients could be moved.

All our collective bargaining agreements contain a grievance procedure, including binding arbitration and a no-strike clause. Unfortunately, recognition of the seriousness of a strike does not resolve the issue.

Resolution can only be found through extensions of the Board's jurisdiction to nonprofit hospitals.

No one is looking for an advantage. The employees of nonprofit hospitals are merely looking for equal treatment and an equal opportunity.

Employees of nonprofit hospitals should no longer be excluded from the act.

It is the cornerstone of our system of industrial democracy. It provides a meaningful alternative to the strike for nonprofit hospital employees who want union representation and, most important, it works.

Mr. HARDY. May I call on Mr. Twomey of San Francisco.

Mr. TWOMEY. Senator Williams and Senator Taft, I am Tim Twomey, secretary-treasurer of local 250 of the San Francisco Bay area. Our union was founded in 1936, and for 31 years, it functioned without protection of any law.

We have today over 20,000 members. We represent workers in all nonprofit hospitals in San Francisco except one, and that is a Chinese hospital in the Chinese ghetto.

The local was founded in 1936, and the impetus of it was the general upheaval that San Francisco, the general strife, the feelings of solidarity among the workers, and also the terrific support and solidarity of all the unions.

In the early days, recognition was gained by heading the picket lines and by the backing of all the unions.

For example, in 1952, we had to strike Notre Dame Hospital for 6 months. Finally, the labor council ruled that all services would be cut off, the stationery, uniforms, inform the hospital they were closing down the boilers.

Within a few days, as soon as the threat was put down, the hospital did agree to recognize us, to sit down and bargain collectively.

We bargained, for example, for 11 hospitals which are members of an association; namely, the affiliate. Another association, Employer Association, of 12 hospitals, four in San Francisco, the remainder in east bay, cities of Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro, as well as the Keyser Foundation Hospital, and so on, employing over 4,000 of our members. These hospitals stretching from Sacramento to San

Jose, 12 other hospitals are represented individually, but basically follow the pattern that is set.

Our experience has been that strikes have occurred over the issue of recognition. We have come many times close to strikes over bargaining, as part of the bargaining process.

For example, in 1969, we did apply for strike sanction, and we did get ready to strike and Mayor Alioto intervened and mediated the dispute, and I might mention our members got 66 cents an hour in

crease.

So we are quite sophisticated. The hospitals are quite sophisticated. We realize our responsibility to the community, that we have always appealed to the community for their help and for their support, and realizing our obligation to the community to settle our differences short of a strike.

We represent the workers employed in San Francisco County Hospital where we also have bargaining rights. We are the collective bargaining agent for the employees of Alameda County Hospital, and I might relate one incident on the strike that happened.

This was actually not connected with local 250 nor any other labor organization. It was at Stanford University.

A few years previous, we had been beaten in the election. The election was conducted by the State Conciliation Service.

The law in California does not allow for any unfair labor practices in the conduct of the election. If this had been conducted under Federal standards, the election would have been thrown out.

Stanford University pulled every unfair labor practice in the book. But they lived to regret it. A few years later they were faced with an ad hoc union which called themselves the Revolutionary Black Workers Caucus, and they wanted to sit down, as part of the bargaining process, they wanted to start talking about who they were going to hire as managers. The university refused, and in the process, the committee decided that they were going to stay in the administrator's office.

The police were called; a fire was started and something like $25,000 worth of damage was done.

It has been happening across the country that because of Federal policy, that draft resisters are, instead of getting jail sentences, in community service. There are many hospitals where draft resisters have gone in.

If hospitals continue with this procedure, I can see there are going to be more instances of revolutionaries and others without any recourse or law to go through.

We are a responsible labor organization. We can be sued. An ad hoc revolutionary committee, who knows who they are? They are here today and gone tomorrow. But the whole point is that we are not asking for you to give us the opportunity to organize these workers. Our union existed for 31 years without any protection. I might mention that the labor movement existed long before the Wagner Act.

What we are asking is that we have orderly legal procedures to determine that do we represent the people. We are asking a fair chance in nonprofit hospitals, that we take our chances through the elective.

process. Let the workers decide whether they want a union to represent them or not. If they do not, if they do not choose us, then of course we go away and maybe try later.

Thank you.

Mr. HARDY. The next representative is Harry Kurshenbaum, local 73, Chicago, Ill.

Mr. KURSHENBAUM. Thank you, Senator, for inviting us. I think we reflect in Chicago our experience in the hospital drive started 5 years ago, and I think we can almost add up the turmoil in terms of senseless waste.

Five years ago, we started covering the Chicago area as a union in seeking recognition rights. Since that time, in broad statistics, onethird of the hospitals that we approached, we have had strikes for recognition.

The question was not a contract. We have never had a strike for a contract. Recognition in two-thirds of the hospitals was gained with pure brinksmanship. And I want to point out the fact that in that brinksmanship, which sometimes took from 6 to 9 months, in order to obtain an election, the kind of turmoil, the kind of confusion that existed both between our organization and management and the employees, left some of the hospitals almost helpless.

We are in a situation now that to us really represents an excruciating experience. There are many hundreds of workers in Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, who want to be represented by us. The hospital said they will never, over their dead body, allow us to have any kind of an election.

We, ourselves, do not care to enforce a recognition procedure, because of the children. Therefore, employees are utterly helpless in that situation because of our feeling of the kind of reaction that would happen to the children in that hospital as patients being almost involved in a conflict.

Presently, we have had two strikes in 1 month, and the strikes themselves were almost really a kind of a senseless situation, where the issue was simply the question: can we have an election? And the hospitals said, "No."

Looking at the waste in this last month in both those situations, they could have been overcome by some orderly procedure.

The hospital workers in Chicago say how can the Federal Government give recognition in the Veterans' Administration hospitals that we represent, and have members in and not give it to us? Why is there such an imbalance?

The State tries to enter the picture and act as mediator, and they are helpless in trying to bring both parties together.

We feel that and think that as unions we have learned a tremendous responsibility in our relationship with hospitals because of the patient factor.

We think that we can eliminate so much of the turmoil that exists in Chicago today and that people can get a kind of responsiveness to resolve their problems of contractual conditions through grievance procedures, and the contract itself, if the Government sets up the standards such as jurisdiction under the National Labor Relations Act. I think that our people in Chicago are desirous, there is no question that they are desirous, that we impart this feeling to you.