Executives of the five University of California medical centers
received bonuses last October, while full-time worker positions are
expected to be dropped in the face of the hospital’s negative
income.
Bonuses totalling nearly $2.4 million were given to 65 health
care executives at the medical centers, and UCLA spent nearly
$343,000 on bonuses for 13 of its executives, according to an
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees press
release.
AFSCME said bonuses were taken out of medical center revenues,
not state funds, according to the press release.
The UCLA Medical Center has said they have had a negative income
this past year and are eliminating some workers because of the
medical center’s financial situation.
“One area that we need to take a look at is personnel
costs because they have been growing,” said Dale Tate, the
executive director of UCLA Health Sciences media relations.
“We are pursuing hope that we will have a positive net
income by the end of the fiscal year,” she said.
The hospital’s financial plan includes evaluating workers
in the next few months.
“We hope that by a combination of attrition,
reassignments, planned retirements and lay-offs we can accomplish
some of the savings in personnel costs, and ultimately we hope that
we may only have to lay off between 100 and 150 people,” Tate
said.
The AFSCME union, which represents 10,000 patient-care workers
at the five UC medical centers, is expecting many of their members
to be cut in the face of the hospital’s financial evaluation,
though none have been cut yet.
“If you are cutting 400 jobs, that is really Draconian.
There are no illusions that it won’t affect our union. We
know it will,” said Nicole Moore, an AFSCME Local-3299
organizer.
The UCLA Medical Center is still determining the amount of
workers and which workers will be eliminated.
“Right now, nobody has been laid off, and over the next
few months, managers will be reviewing their programs, and at some
point decisions will be made,” Tate said.
Many believe that a recent increase in the number of Medi-Cal
and Medicare patients has financially hurt hospitals across
California.
“We’ve been facing difficult financial situations
like other Los Angeles hospitals. UCLA is hardly alone,” Tate
said.
AFSCME believes that cutting jobs will not serve to aid the
hospital, as they have said that it is already understaffed.
“They don’t have less patients, they just have more
patients,” Moore said. “So if you start cutting
frontline patient-care positions, it will really impact quality
(of) patient care.”
The outcome of the hospital’s reevaluation of jobs will be
seen in the next few months, and both the UCLA medical center and
AFSCME remain unsure of what will ultimately happen.