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Nurses object to sale of Forum
Hearing begins on offer by CHS
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
YOUNGSTOWN
A hearing on the sale of Forum Health — and an objection to the sale — was to begin at 9:30 a.m. today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court here.
The Ohio Nurses Association filed the lone objection to the sale of Forum Health to Community Health Systems’ subsidiary, the Youngstown Ohio Hospital Company. The deadline for filing objections was Monday.
In its objection, the ONA said the sale violates work agreements between the nurses union and Forum.
Specifically, ONA says Forum’s sale motion, among other things, seeks to sell Forum’s assets in violation of the contract and attempts to circumvent obligations that are binding upon Forum Health and its successors.
Its objection stems from the sale of Forum Health in a private auction Thursday at which Forum chose CHS’ $120 million bid as the winner.
The other bidder at the auction was Ardent Health Services, which offered $69.8 million for the bankrupt health-care system in June. It was not reported how much Ardent bid for Forum at the auction. However, Forum declared Ardent the back-up bidder should the deal with CHS fall through.
Community Health Systems’ original bid, submitted a few days before the auction, was $100 million.
ONA represents about 300 registered nurses at Northside Medical Center in Youngstown and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland. Forum’s other major facility is Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren, where registered nurses are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
In its objection, ONA said none of the four options CHS said it intends to offer the nurses’ association “fully conforms” to the requirements of successorship language in the ONA contracts at Northside and Hillside.
Under Option 1, ONA said CHS would accept “sight unseen” confidential agreements negotiated between ONA and other Forum unions with Ardent considerably in advance of the auction.
Option 2 is a partial assumption of existing contracts, subject to changes in benefit programs as provided in the Ardent memorandums of understanding. Option 3 provides for bargaining anew from scratch.
Under Option 4, CHS would recognize ONA as the exclusive bargaining representative for nurses at Northside and Hillside. The union says this is “meaningless” because by virtue of hiring a majority of the employees, CHS is already obligated to recognize the union as bargaining agent.
Also, the nurses’ union said it is leery of a CHS comment in its sale proposal that it would hire all nurses “actively working” at the time of the sale or on medical leave, military leave, short-term disability, maternity leave or on workers’ compensation.
In its objection, the ONA said its contract with Forum requires that all nurses represented by the union be retained, including those on leave for various reasons including injury and education and other reasons permitted by the contract.
In addition, all union officers on leave from Forum Health would lose their employment and ability to represent their members, the union said.
“Forum would effectively decapitate the union by transferring only ‘active’ employees,” the ONA motion said.