Health care workers protest at Sacramento’s Mercy General over racist comments, inequities
About three dozen Dignity Health workers protested Thursday in front of Mercy General Hospital, saying Black members in the union have been subjected to racist language and double standards.
Upon reporting the incidents to managers, union officials said, no actions were taken against those who used offensive language or who unfairly applied standards.
Asked about the incidents, leaders of Dignity Health issued a statement, saying: “We are deeply concerned by alleged incidents of racism at one of our care facilities. Dignity Health takes this matter very seriously and we are conducting a thorough investigation. We have strict anti-discrimination policies and do not tolerate or condone discrimination of any kind.”
Here are three examples workers gave of incidents that provoked the protest:
▪ A manager told a “joke” about God rescuing a drowning white man over a drowning Black man.
▪ A white employee called a Black employee a monkey.
▪ A manager who used racist comments later tried to intimidate employees by shooting a staple into his arm and then digging it out.
DeAngela Linwood, a surgical technologist at a Dignity hospital, said she was out supporting the protest because her manager recently told her that she could not wear a face mask and other accessories with a “Black Lives Matter” insignia.
“She told me that insignias were not allowed, but yet for eight years that I’ve been with Dignity Health, I’ve worn Dallas Cowboys insignias, I’ve worn Texas Ranger hats,” Linwood said. “We wear four-leaf clovers for St. Paddy’s Day. We wear pink ribbons for breast cancer.”
Linwood said she felt this was meant to silence individuals pushing for equity and a safer place for the George Floyds and Breonna Taylors of the world. Police killed Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, in March after entering her home with a no-knock search warrant.
Floyd’s death provoked protests in Sacramento around the world earlier this summer. Video surfaced showing that a Minneapolis police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, even after he complained that he could not breathe.
“I am a parent of three,” Linwood said. “I am a black woman. With everything we’re facing ... I wear this because I fight for social injustice, I fight for the George Floyds. I fight for the Breonna Taylors. I fight because I have children, who when they leave my home, I don’t know if they’re coming home.”
Mark Velez, a Roseville employment attorney, said: “It’s unfortunate. It’s constitutional free speech, but (an employee) doesn’t have the guarantee of constitutional free speech unless they are a (government employee).”
Two years ago, Kaiser Permanente fired a registered nurse who posted social media comments saying Stephon Clark “deserved it.” At the time, a number of people said her comments should be protected as constitutional free speech. Sacramento police chased down and shot an unarmed Clark multiple times, killing him in the backyard of his grandparents’ home in March 2018.
While free speech protections do not extend into private-sector workplaces, University of California, Davis employment law professor Leticia Saucedo said California labor law prevents employers from disciplining employees for political activity.
“These are the kinds of things that the statute was implemented for,” Saucedo said of Linwood’s BLM garments. “It protects employees for their expression of political activity.”
Political expression may also be allowed under her union’s collective bargaining agreement with Dignity, Saucedo said, and if so, the Dignity restriction might run afoul of that as well.
Linwood said she’s concerned that Dignity is slow to act when employees face racist attacks. Several years ago, she said, Dignity management and human resources did nothing after an anesthesiologist at Methodist Hospital called her the n-word.
A protest by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West spurred action, she said, but Dignity’s response essentially punished her for making the complaint.
Management limited her to working in the surgery center and the anesthesiologist to the hospital’s operating room. Later, she said, the anesthesiologist threatened to kill a white physician and it was only then that the anesthesiologist was disciplined.
“You don’t expect it in the workplace,” Linwood said. “You don’t expect it from doctors and so it crushes your soul when you work next to somebody so closely and they disrespect you on a daily basis. And, they don’t disrespect you based on how you perform your job. They disrespect you solely based off the color of your skin.”
Dignity leaders said: “We will meet this moment decisively. Significant work in support of diversity and inclusion in our organization has been underway, but we will accelerate and expand this work immediately to include diversity training for leaders, facilitation of open forum discussions and more frequent communications from senior leaders.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 4:56 PM.
