Union Threatens Strike at Community Services; Clients Face
Disruption

By MANDY LOCKE

Mental health counselors at Martha's Vineyard Community
Services are now threatening to strike as the agency remains locked in
tough contract talks with unionized employees.

For seven months, tensions continued to mount at the negotiation
table over pay issues.

At risk are counseling and nursing services for hundreds of
Islanders served by the Island Counseling Center and the Visiting Nurse
Service, the unionized units of Community Services. In a typical week,
ICC handles 180 clients.

In a negotiation session yesterday, agency leaders and union
representatives agreed on several contract language items but once more
made no progress on efforts to substantially narrow a $100,000 gap
between the two sides' ideas of fair compensation.

"It's been a year [since contract negotiations began.] A
kind of progress on language items is mixed with a stone wall on
economic issues," said Jerry Fishbein, director of Service
Employees International Union, Hospital Workers local 767, the union
representing more than 30 employees within the two units.

Union stewards alerted agency leaders their membership has granted
them the authority to call a strike.

"I think we're at the end of our rope. We've been
in negotiations for over a year. The bottom line issue is an overdue pay
raise," said Rob Doyle, an employee at Island Counseling Center.

ICC employees secured union representation in June of 2002 after
months of heated campaigns within the agency. The National Labor
Relations Board added VNS employees to the voting bloc shortly before
the election.

Two more negotiation sessions have been scheduled before the
agency's annual board meeting on Oct. 28. Union leaders indicated
yesterday the public could expect an announcement at the board meeting
indicating whether or not they will move ahead with a strike. Under
federal labor laws, the union must file with the employer and government
officials a 10-day advance notice of an intention to strike.

This week, counselors at ICC prepared their patients for just such
an eventuality.

"We have an ethical obligation to help them deal with
interruptions," said counselor Jane Dreeben. One by one,
counselors are coaching clients on how to deal with missed treatments,
or advising them to schedule sessions with a counselor outside of the
Community Services campus.

"From my youngest client, who is 16, to my oldest client in
his 20s, they've been so incredibly supportive. They keep telling
me ‘You have to do what you have to do,'" said Amy
Lilavois, a counselor at ICC.

Of ICC's clients, roughly one-third are on the state funded
insurance plan, MassHealth. Another third of those patients receive free
care or pay on a sliding scale because of limited income.

Throughout the long rift between agency leaders and ICC staff, both
sides have resisted disruption in client care. Thus this move toward a
strike signals desperation of sorts - a drastic step to push
negotiations along.

"We're stuck. They're simply not willing to budge
on the wage issue," said Ms. Lilavois.

Management stands by its original package of a 2.5 per cent yearly
salary increase. This summer, union employees sought to have a portion
of proceeds from the highrolling Possible Dreams auction targeted to
wages, Management refused, but offered to run a separate fundraiser for
that purpose. The offer for an additional fundraiser, management's
labor attorney Richard Perras said, still stands.

The union's wage proposal calls for an average of 15 per cent
increases to staff salaries, down from an initial 35 per cent increase
proposed this spring. Yesterday, union leaders let go of a clause in
their wage package which would establish a committee of employees to
weigh in on distribution of Possible Dreams proceeds.

Management criticized the union's threats, calling the
potential strike a step backward.

"We hope they don't do anything as drastic and
unnecessary as this," said Mr. Perras. "A strike will be
absolutely counterproductive. A strike will be about as
counterproductive as threats [the union] made to disrupt the
auction."

Mr. Perras said the agency is bracing itself for a strike, though he
refused to offer details about those provisions.

"We will be and are adequately prepared to address the needs
of community and everyone we serve [during a strike]. But this really is
a terrible distraction to what we should be doing," Mr. Perras
said.

Employees who choose to strike face a risk. They forego wages, and
they could also lose their jobs. If the union launches an economic
strike - a protest over wages or other unresolved contract issues
- management can hire permanent replacements.

"Some people will be unable to walk out because of financial
hardship. Others worry their insurance will be yanked," Mr. Doyle
said, noting that each ICC and VNS employee may decide whether or not to
strike.

Some counselors will simply see their patients at their private
practices. Five counselors, including Ms. Dreeben and Ms. Lilavois,
recently formed a collaborative office in Vineyard Haven where they
treat patients outside the umbrella of Community Services. The agency
does not require clinicians to sign a noncompete clause.

Ms. Dreeben said that patients could be seen at their Vineyard Haven
location during a strike.

"We've talked with our ethics boards in our particular
fields to make sure this is okay," said Ms. Dreeben.

These counselors, she said, would make every effort to treat
patients unable to pay. Community services, unlike most private
clinicians on the Island, serves patients covered by MassHealth. State
regulations require counselors to offer 24-hour emergency services to
receive MassHealth reimbursement.

One source of union frustration is the continued refusal of members
of Community Services' board of directors to communicate directly
with employees. ICC employees have made several attempts to air their
grievances with board members over the last year.

The agency's leaders are deferring all communication with the
union and the public to Mr. Perras.

The leaders said they are trying to abide by federal labor laws,
which prohibit management from pressuring employees in contract
negotiations.

Ned Robinson-Lynch, executive director of Community Services, will
not address labor issues with reporters, and has not done so for months.

The latest invitation by the union to board members "to hear
more than management's perceptions of [the union's]
request" was rebuffed a few weeks ago.

"The board will not meet with bargaining unit members
regarding contract negotiations. The board is 100 per cent supportive of
the MVCS management and negotiating team in these contract negotiations.
Their proposals are our proposals," said Ursula Ferro, chairman of
the board in a letter to the union Sept. 30.