Employees Vote to Scrap Union at St Lukes Miners Campus

St. Luke’s Miners Campus employees represented by collective bargaining unit OPEIU Local 112 voted on August 9 in favor of decertification. As result, the Miners Campus no longer has a union presence.

“St. Luke’s understand and supports our employees’ decision to turn away from union representation,” Miners Campus President Wendy Lazo said. “This indicates to us that our employees feel they are valued and treated fairly, which is a point of pride for St. Luke’s University Health Network.”

OPEIU (Office and Professional Employees International Union) represented 90 full- and part-time employees, who included registered nurses, medical laboratory technicians, pharmacists, physical therapists and occupational therapists.

The August 9 election was based on the votes of 77 of the employees covered by the OPEIU collective bargaining agreement. Employees sided by a decisive 2:1 margin against the union.

The vote will allow St. Luke’s to give pay raises to former union employees, bringing their compensation in line with the rest of the Network, Lazo noted. She said St. Luke’s plans to make all compensation changes in the first subsequent full pay period, and to transition employees to standard Network benefit plans on January 1, 2019.

In 2014, an AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) unit representing approximately 184 full- and part-time Miners Campus employees voted to decertify. The unit represented maintenance, clerical and support employees as well as licensed practical nurses and technical employees such as physical therapists.

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About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of 14,000 employees providing services at 10 hospitals and over 300 outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue of $1.9 billion, the Network’s service area includes 10 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe and Schuylkill counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.  Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania.  In partnership with Temple University, St. Luke’s created the region’s first and only regional medical school campus.  It also operates the nation’s longest continuously operating School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 28 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 226 residents and fellows.  St. Luke’s is the only health care system in central-eastern Pennsylvania to earn Medicare’s five-star rating (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.  St. Luke’s has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from IBM Watson Health (formerly Truven Health Analytics) repeatedly – six times total and four years in a row including 2018.  It has also been cited by IBM Watson Health as a 50 Top Cardiovascular Program.  Utilizing the EPIC electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.  St. Luke’s is also recognized as one of the state’s lowest cost providers.