When Talking-the-Talk is not enough

Most people are familiar with the ongoing struggle among the employees at Children’s Hospital to form a union. I wanted to share this article from last week’s OC Weekly about the efforts of health-care workers trying to form a union at the Sisters of St. Joseph hospital in Orange. What I found intriguing was that Sisters of Joseph have a long Social Justice tradition:

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange trace their roots back to 17th-century France; the order is well-known for a solid record of commitment to the poor. They’ve marched with Cesar Chavez and supported janitors’ and garment workers’ union-organization efforts. They opened their first hospital in Eureka in 1920 after the big flu epidemic of 1918, giving birth to a health-care system that is now 14 hospitals strong and served just more than 2 million patients last year.

According to the article, “[t]he St. Joseph Health System says it endorses its employees’ rights to unionize,” however, it has poor track record on allowing its own employees to actually unionize. The entire article is very interesting read on the difficulties faced by workers when they try to organize, even if they work for an organization that has a history of Social Justice.