For Immediate Release
June 11, 2024
Adrienne Enghouse
enghousea@yahoo.com
503-810-4489
SANDOVAL, N.M.—The United Health Professionals of New Mexico will tell the Public Employees Labor Relations Board tomorrow that the University of New Mexico Sandoval Regional Medical Center has illegally refused to comply with multiple orders from the Board to bargain with the healthcare union.
“This is an employer that has completely abandoned the rule of law, ignoring this Board’s orders and has refused its most basic statutory duty—to bargain a contract,” said the union’s attorney, Shane Youtz.
Petty litigation and delay tactics—all paid for with taxpayer dollars—have been an ongoing problem, he said, since December 2023, when the Board’s hearing officer issued a bargain order, later confirmed by the full Board, stating that SRMC “breached a statutory duty to bargain” with the union over layoffs and ordered the hospital to recognize and bargain in good faith immediately. The most recent slam against the hospital’s anti-union position came from District Judge Joshua Allison, who denied, on all grounds, the hospital’s emergency motion to stay the previous orders to bargain. And today, the hospital filed another motion to consolidate cases, a waste of taxpayer dollars since it has already been denied.
UHPNM charged the hospital is now going after employees by changing their work schedules unilaterally, something that should be a subject of bargaining.
“The hospital’s effort to deny bargaining is at best retaliation against workers and at worst an effort to ignore the elephant in the room—poor quality of healthcare. What is UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center President Jamie Silva-Steele afraid of? Improving healthcare for the community? That is precisely what the union wants to discuss at the bargaining table,” said UHPNM organizer Adrienne Enghouse, R.N.
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