When EMMC Nurses Took on Management in the Struggle of ‘84

This article is the fourth part in a series on the history of nurse organizing in Maine. You can read earlier installments here,here and here.

When it came time for registered nurses to negotiate a second contract with Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, the battle lines were already drawn. It took years of legal wrangling, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and a court order to force the hospital to negotiate the first contract. Now, EMMC President Robert Brandow and the local businessmen who sat on the hospital’s Board of Trustees were determined to halt any progress the nurses had made, even if it meant provoking them into a strike and busting the union. The hospital once again brought in its rabidly anti-union attorney Malcolm Morrell to lead negotiations.

“It was a nightmare,” recalled nurse organizer Sue Arcadi, who worked on the second contract campaign. “It was the first time that nurses had organized and voted for a union [in Maine] and they just couldn’t wrap their heads around it. They were just brutal and did everything they could to avoid negotiating in good faith.”

Bargaining began in March 1984 and by June the nurses were working without a contract. Then in September, after six months of bargaining with management and a federal mediator, EMMC nurses voted overwhelmingly to strike. They set up their war room in a former Papa Gambino's pizza parlor temporarily donated by a sympathetic landlord. The space on State Street was humming when a Bangor Daily News reporter stopped by in late September, 1984, just three days before the strike deadline.

“Strike headquarters!” nurse and union treasurer Judy Cushman cheerily answered the phone.

A friendly neighborhood cat stood in the window of the nurses’ emergency headquarters that was filled with donated furniture, old rugs, a coffee pot and office equipment. Newspaper clippings chronicling the months-long struggle with the hospital covered the walls along with a bulletin board of help wanted ads for nurses in the event of a prolonged strike. A chart with lists of days and times to sign up for pickets around the clock was filled with names. One poster had the words “We are not satisfied… the agitation will go on.” Another said, “Pay should equal education and responsibility.”

The Maine AFL-CIO and other unions lent their support to the nurses. Featured prominently on the headquarters walls were messages of solidarity like “Local 10-82 Millinocket supports the nurses of Eastern Maine Medical Center in their struggle for fair pay, fair play and human dignity.”

Teamsters Local 340 vowed that none of its members would make any deliveries to the hospital from UPS, Grant’s Dairy or the St. Johnsbury Trucking Company in the event of a strike.

“I can’t imagine a UPS guy crossing a picket line,” Teamsters 340 President Bob Piccone told the Bangor Daily News.

In a letter, Piccone told the nurses that his union would “fully support any legal action that you feel is necessary to win your demands.” Local 340 members fully understood the importance of maintaining solidarity, having recently come off a bitter 18-month strike at Coles Express trucking that ended in a devastating defeat for the union.

Chief steward Sandy Stuart of Bangor said nurses wanted to have a say in management decisions in order to provide quality patient care. Other issues included health insurance, length of the contract, the career ladder, and whether all RNs would have to pay for the cost of union representation. Pay was also issue, but it was not main issue. Stuart told a reporter that she wouldn’t put her job on the line “for a 2 percent pay raise.”

“We are patients’ advocates,” said Cushman, the union treasurer.

“If we can’t protect ourselves, we can’t protect our patients,” said Kim Pomeroy of Bangor, an ICU nurse.

“We’re risking our homes and our families,” another nurse said.

“They say they are going to permanently replace us,” Stuart said, pointing to a big nurses-wanted advertisement the hospital leaders have been running in the BDN.

Another said they were the sole support of themselves and their families and faced the possibility of losing everything by striking. Janet Perrault of Dixmont said it came down to a question of “how we’re going to survive.” But there are positive signs, the nurses said. “The support has been unreal,” said Pomeroy, and others chimed in saying that support has come from doctors, nurses from around the state, members of other unions and especially patients.

But it is, one nurse said as she shook her head, a “stressful time for everyone.”

EMMC management assured its patients that public safety would not be at risk in the event of a strike and would continue to operate as usual. In its communications with the Governor, management said, “with some overtime and staffing adjustments, we can handle the normal census for this time of year with maintenance of quality service.” Speaking to the Bangor Daily News, EMMC administrator Thomas Zellers, said it already had 50 applicants for RN positions and wouldn’t hesitate to permanently replace striking nurses if they "abandon their patients.”

“This isn’t a threat,” said Zellers in an interview four days before the strike deadline. “It is the only choice we have to respond to those vacancies” that might be created by a strike. Striking nurses wouldn’t be fired, but they might find, if the dispute is settled, that they don’t get the same jobs back upon returning, Zellers said. “That is the risk that you take if you strike,” he said.

As the strike loomed, the phone rang constantly at strike headquarters as callers asked for updates from negotiations in Augusta, but there was little progress to report.

Trustees deny attempt to “bust” nurses’ union

According to the nurses, there wasn’t any question that the hospital was desperately trying to break their union. The pro-management Bangor Daily News noted that, “Labor is the highest cost of almost any business,” so if the union was broken “hospital’s management could, possibly, have more leeway in charting its own destiny during an era when many health care institutions are expected to be in a financial bind.” Although 1984 wasn’t turning out to be as disastrous a year for unions as 1983, the paper wrote that “memory of unsuccessful strikes both nationally and locally is still fresh in the minds of most people in the community.”

“With unions on the defensive, wouldn’t it be a good time for management to make its move?” the BDN suggested.

Unsurprisingly, the businessman who controlled the Board of Trustees — Chairman Doug Brown (President of Doug’s Shop n’ Save), Ralph E. Leonard (Chairman of H.E. Sargent Inc.), and Clifton G. Eames (President of N.H. Bragg) — denied they had any desire to go after the young nurses’ union. They claimed that if they wanted the union decertified it might have been a better strategy to offer a pay cut, but instead, the nurses were offered a pay increase. The three businessman said their approach to health care and bargaining was influenced by knowledge that sick people are the “commodity” that EMMC is in the “business” of providing care for.

“It makes it rough,” said Leonard. “If it had been my business, I would have taken a much harder line.”

“Because this is a humanitarian issue,” said Eames, “it has become very emotional, and that has prompted some observers and commentators to say we ought to be quick and ready to spend whatever it takes.” But that would be a mistake for the longterm viability of the hospital, he added.

Brown said that as trustees, it is difficult to take a firm stand because unlike their own companies, the threesome have no vested interest in the hospital. Instead they must make a moral decision for the institution over the long haul, he said.

“It was the human element that propelled us to go over the 5.3 percent limit, which from a strictly business viewpoint we shouldn’t have done,” said Brown, referring to a wage limit recommended by the hospital’s finance commission.

Four decades later, retired nurse Dottie Barron, who was chair of the nurses bargaining team in 1984, scoffed at the implication that the hospital was somehow being soft on the nurses.

“I don’t know how they could have taken a harder line than they did, but whatever,” said Barron.

In fact, at one point in negotiations, a medical center executive got so angry at her for bringing up an incident that happened at hospital on his watch that he flew across the table at Barron.

“I nearly got knocked out,” recalled Barron. “I said something truthful in a session with a mediator and two or three of the top people — our president and a couple hospital people — and he didn’t like it and he came right at me swinging.”

The federal mediator John LaPoint had to jump between the man and Barron to stop him from taking a swing at her.

“I wasn’t going to lie to [the executive]. I was there when this stuff was going on. He was in some office somewhere,” said Barron. “They’d say ‘our administrators say this’ and I’d say the administrators aren’t stupid. They’re going to tell you what you want to hear.’ I’m a very blunt person and don’t mess around with me.”

With just days to the strike deadline, doctors began anonymously speaking to the media about a strike. While some expressed fears that it would be a “disaster” and they wouldn’t be able to provide the same level of care, a number of them were very sympathetic to their nurse colleagues.

“I have problems with a society that demands the best medical care and then puts a cap on what it’s willing to pay,” said one doctor, referring to administration’s claim that nurses’ demands went beyond state health care expenditure guidelines.

“The hospital is treating nurses as a non-professional group,” said a specialist. “The nurses are angry at the way they’ve been treated. The administration has been incorrect in the way they’ve been dealing with the nurses.”

Hospital Rejects Mediator’s “Fair Share” Proposal

In the final week of negotiations, Governor Joe Brennan called both sides to Augusta to sit down with his Commissioner of Personnel David W. Bustin and federal mediator John LaPoint to hammer out a deal to prevent a strike. He had most recently intervened in a strike at Keyes Fiber (now Huhtamaki) in Waterville.

“Oh my God, it was exciting,” said Polly Campbell, who worked as an MSNA organizer on the campaign. “The Governor said I’m not going to have a nurses’ strike on my watch’ and he put us all in a state office building and said, ‘You’re not leaving until this is settled.’”

The main bone of contention was the hospital’s refusal to agree to a union security clause that would require all nurses to contribute for the cost of representation. At that time, 80 percent of the eligible nurses at EMMC were dues-paying members, but another 20 percent got the benefits of union representation without paying for it. Federal mediator John LaPoint came up with a compromise that would have given current nurses an option to remain outside the union and pay no dues; to join and pay full dues; or to pay half of the dues and only vote on matters affecting the local unit. New nurses would have the option of paying full dues or half. The nurses reluctantly agreed to the compromise.

Campbell said the the raises in the proposal were “less than we felt we could live with and distributed in such a way that the overall increase is less than the non-union employees will receive.”

“Understand that the nurses aren’t happy, but due to the public interest” were willing to accept LaPoint’s proposal, Gilmore added.

However, with one day remaining until the strike deadline, EMMC announced that it would not support LaPoint’s recommendation, even with the watered down fair share provision. In a statement, hospital officials said that “the medical center remains firm in its resolve concerning the individual freedoms of our employees. Paying all or any portion of union fees should not be a condition of employment for any nurses to work at the medical center.” Speaking to reporters, LaPoint was visibly frustrated.

“They turned it down on that one issue,” LaPoint said. “I’m obviously disappointed.” He suggested it would be difficult to head off a strike the next day.

MSNA issued a statement accusing the hospital of acting “irresponsibly” and showing “a blatant disregard for the governor’s challenge” to end the dispute.

“We say the hospital is trying once again to break up the union,” said MSNA, charging that it is using union security to “force a strike.”

“I am very angry,” said Local 1 President Anna Gilmour. “I think it is obvious that the total thing is union-busting. It is a power play with the association. They must take full responsibility for the strike.”

Nurses flooded strike headquarters with angry calls. “The nurses have been upset, but they are furious now,” said Gilmour… We were willing to take a poor economic package…What is going to happen, you are to see a much stronger strike. They have done the worst possible thing they could do. The community is really going to be angry.”

LaPoint said hospital officials had asked him why he included any form of fair share in his recommendation, knowing that they were adamantly opposed to it.

“I informed them I was a faced with a very firm position on the other side. I had no choice,” he said. “The issue is most sensitive because the long negotiations (since last May) have literally bankrupted the union.” The union “can’t compete with the hospital’s ability… to bargain endlessly,” he added.

Indeed, the nurses had lost $15,000 in personal income due to days of missed work because of bargaining. They had resorted to holding yard sales and other benefits to raise the money they needed to continue fighting. At the last minute, the Governor intervened a second time and EMMC nurses agreed to delay the strike for another two days to continue bargaining.

Meanwhile, the hospital’s allies at the Bangor Daily News went into overdrive to do damage control. In an editorial the day before the new strike deadline, the BDN’s Mark Woodward, who would later take a leave of absence to work on Senator Susan Collins’ first Senate campaign in the 1990s, accused the federal mediator of “overstep[ping] his authority” and “hurt[ing] the negotiations process” by recommending a limited fair share provision. He argued that requiring all members of the bargaining unit to pay for their union representation was akin discriminating against protected classes of people like women and African Americans.

“In an era of anti-discrimination in employment — when society is forcefully opposing job discrimination on the basis of race, religious preference, age and sex — why should the hospital be made to discriminate against prospective employees for whom union participation and forced union financial support is unacceptable?” wrote Woodward.

On the night of the Sept. 27 strike deadline, the nurses were more than ready to walk out, said Barron.

“We were ready to go off at seven that morning when the night crew went out the day before. The day crew wasn’t going in,” she said. “Yeah, it was going to happen, but Brennan put a lot of pressure on both sides to settle.”

At 1:30am on Wednesday, Sept. 27, three hours before the strike was to start, both sides reached a settlement. The strike was called off for the rank and file to consider the proposal. Under the compromise the EMMC nurses were given three options: join the union as dues-paying members, pay a “fair share” fee equal to 80 percent of union dues, or pay nothing. But a nurse paying nothing who files a grievance would pay lawyer’s fees to the union, or to private counsel.

This agreement was similar to a 1979 fair share compromise state employees reached with the state over the objections of Republican lawmakers. MSEA officials reported an increase in membership from 80 percent of those represented by the union to 90 percent following the adoption of the fair share provision.

“We are very pleased with the proposal,” said Anna Gilmore, president of MSNA Local 1. “We are convinced that the only reason the hospital capitulated was the outcry of support the nurses got from the public.”

David W. Bustin, the Governor’s Commissioner of Personnel pointed out that once the union lays out the high costs of representation in grievance proceedings many nurses would realize that it would be cheaper to belong to the union if a problem occurs with management.

Governor Brennan said he was “heartened by the settlement.”

“The agreement… is in the true spirit of compromise where neither party is totally happy, but each regards the resolution as fair and in keeping with the goal” of maintaining quality care.

However, Bustin said a lot would need to be done to repair the relationship between the RNs and management.

“I think this was as bitter a relationship between management and labor as any that I have ever seen,” said Bustin.

In the following contract in 1988, negotiations wrapped up five months early and EMMC nurses were able to win an impressive 30 percent wage, boosting maximum salaries to $40,000 a year in what a federal mediator called "a great step forward" in their professional careers. Because of their solidarity and determination, EMMC nurses were now the highest paid nurses in the state. Eventually they were also able to finally win a union security agreement where all members were required to pay their fair share for union representation, protection and benefits. MSNA negotiator Anna Gilmour said a nurse shortage also "played a role in the hospital's acceptance of the new contract."

The month after the 1984 contract was overwhelmingly ratified, Dottie Barron received the Maine State Nurses Association “Distinguished Service Award” for her leadership role in “developing a cohesive unit of professional nurses committed to raising the standards of Nursing Practice.” By that time she had served three years as director of MSNA, President of District II and chairperson of the negotiating team. She went on to serve on the MSNA executive boar for many years and chaired a committee to organize other nurses’ unions at small rural hospitals in central and Downeast Maine. She says she is proud of her work in making hospital workplaces “a little more fair,” but the fight for safe patient staffing is still a fight yet to be won.

“Nurses don’t go into nursing to learn politics and legal stuff; we go in for the care of our patients and try to make a better outcome in people’s lives,” she told an interviewer for the 2016 book Maine Nursing: Interviews and History on Caring and Competence. “For me, on a personal basis, the objective was getting a contract. I did a lot of hard work and invested a lot of time for something I believed in, and I went through a lot of stuff. I think signing that first contract for me was one of the highlights of my career. I felt like I’d fought for nursing and nursing rights. I fought for making it better for patients.”

By the 1990s, MSNA's roster included Local 982 in Mt. Desert IslandHospital, Local 10-82 at Millinocket Regional Hospital, Local 1-88 at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth; Calais Regional Hospital, Local 50/50 in the Portland area, and Unit 1 in Bangor area.

Next week we will cover the struggles of nurses to organize some of these rural hospitals.