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The Hospital

It has been 18 years since I decided to go to school to become a unit coordinator, then go to work for Kaiser, not knowing that my life was going to change not only for the worse but other people's lives would change for the worse as well.  Life should improve but certainly this was not to be the case while working for Kaiser.

I was pretty proud of myself taking the National Unit Coordinator test 2 days before I had even started that job.  I knew passed before I even started.  I told Jan that I passed the nationwide test before I even started and she looked at me blindly and said absolutely nothing.  Jan previously had  been in the military and then later as an LVN, got put in charge of Unit assistants to which she knows nothing about.  Her only job is to make sure that she knows how to keep cutting the budget.  She even had the nerve to tell me how long it takes to process a patient's charts including transcribing doctors orders.  (When I first started, Jan had told me that we had 3 duties that we would be held accountable for.  1.  Fill out lab slips for the 6 a.m. lab tech, 2.  Update med sheets for the nurses and 3.  Fill patient charts with unfilled patient forms. This is what I went to school for 6 months for?  God how things changed around here?)

About 20 minutes per patient she said.  Not in the evening, I said!  These were all new orders that I was doing.  There are many and can be 2 pages long.  Not the everyday routine ones after the patient has been in the hospital for a day or two.  Even the day people don't have the workload the evening folks do.  We had to set everything up for the day shift which does regular routine care.

Now I had worked in a hospital before but this was different.  Those that had warned me were right!  THE KAISER HMO, is like no other medical care, like no other doctor care, like no other hospital.  Therein lies the truth, like no other health care.  No regard for human life.  No regard for human beings.  Money, ONLY money being the primary goal. 

How did Kaiser accomplish that goal?  Well here goes HOW money became the only priority.

An elderly patient about 75 years old with an unknown etiology otherwise known as an unknown medical condition waits in the ER for at least 16 hours if he's lucky.  Sometimes he waits over 24 hours.  Patients who die after 3:30 P.M. or on weekends lie in the rooms for hours waiting to be transferred to the hospital morgue.  Employees, other patients and other relatives pass by and see the expired patients.  The RN's have no sense to close the door for the deceased and treat the patient with some final dignity.

Live patients in the ER lie waiting in the halls for hours waiting for rooms while expired patients wait to be taken to another part of the hospital.

Even the dead wait to be transferred.

Pat, an evening nurse arrives through the wards, madder than anyone can be because her husband had been in the ER for over 14 hours with a damaged thumb.  He's even madder because he's a pro-golfer with a thumb that was neglected for over 14 hours and his thumbs are part of his livelihood.  But Kaiser doesn't discriminate because they neglect all their patients the same way. 

The evening nurse supervisors (only 2 for the whole hospital or 1 on the night shift or 1 on the weekend shifts) are busy running around transferring patients (a patient is lucky if they aren't transferred 5 times and out to the Camellia building where the patient is exposed to the weather of the day) while being transferred from one room to another, trying to close stations so they can cut down on nursing staff and keep from calling in nurses for the next shift.  Supervisors adding up the patient care numbers to justify discharging the patients and transferring them to other wards with less nurse - patient ratio. 

Well one PM shift, (its my time to leave at 8:00 P.M. I only worked 4 hours unlike the day shift who worked 8 hours and then there was the night shift when there wasn't any one ever scheduled, leaving all the unit assistant's work for the RN's)(I started as an on call in May of 1985 and then in September of "85" I was given a 20 hour, 5 day a week job preventing me from acquiring overtime pay and extra hours to pay into my retirement.  Of course this wasn't  what was told to me then.  I was told that taking this 20 hour position would be the same as a full time position in getting my retirement.  Being passed over extra time for almost 3 years.  Of course I wasn't the only one to be cheated out of hours and pay.)  ((I told Jan to put me on THE list for extra hours during the day.  I never got called.  I was too low on the seniority list or so Jan told me years later.  I later found the list in my personnel file, which I have because of a law suit I've filed against Kaiser, and I had never been put on the list!))

I tried to transfer to the NEW South Sacramento hospital ((Another horror story)) but the supervisor Willie took too long to write an evaluation for me and the five day waiting period is over and so were my chances of transferring.  I became so tired of this place where nothing ever gets done and patient care is being compromised all the time.  The only goal is to adhere to the budget which is always being cut and a matter of contention between management and the people who actually take care of the patients. 

"IT'S NOT IN THE BUDGET," is a very common excuse to keep from getting anything in this hospital.  Supervisors were always talking about changing the numbers so that patients are emptied out of a bed and sent home sooner than they should be, instead of the supervisors talking about how the patients are doing and what do they need to be more comfortable during their stay in this hospital.  They were always looking for supplies and for an employee to do a job that is done in the mornings and afternoons.  Why were we always getting patients at this time when the personnel were not there and the doctors were not there either?  We were running around like chickens with our heads cut off.  How does this poor hospital working environment benefit the patient?  Well it doesn't and its really about saving money, and getting rid of the older employee which means saving money too.

1986

I got a call from the Unit assistant's supervisor's office and I was asked if I could stay until 11:00 P.M. because of B station's opening and having newly admitted patients.  I said sure.  That was the beginning of a nightmare that I will never forget.

One RN and myself.  Thirteen patients had arrived from the ER, post operative patients, pre-operative patients, transferred patients from the telemetry unit, the intensive care unit, all in 3 hours.  Dan TeS. the PM Supervisor was supposed to assign a nursing attendant for a monitored patient who needed a complete observance but decided against it.  That nursing attendant was supposed to start at * P.M. but Dan called her in for the next shift at 11 P.M. instead.  ALL TO SAVE MONEY! 

One nurse was tending to all of the patient's needs while I was doing all the new doctor's orders which included putting patient's charts together, writing up lab work slips, x-ray slips, making appointments, writing up med sheets, calling housekeeping to make sure that the rooms and the beds were clean and made up.  I also had to talk with admitting to make sure that all patients were compatible with each other, make sure that no one had an infection and especially with one that had just had surgery.  I also had to run up the blood from the Blood Bank and run the lab specimens to the lab, search for equipment, the much coveted and rare wheel chairs and the I.V. poles.  I monitored machines, took care of the chest tube tray, forms and patient charts.

Thirteen patients and ALL this was done within 3 hours.  It was maddening and I couldn't believe it when Dan said that the nursing attendant would not be in until 11:00 P.M.  This was a very dangerous situation for the patients and for the staff.  At 11:00 P.M., Joann and I hugged each other.  I was exhausted, in pain and feeling very, very sad. 1986
 

January 1988

On another evening shift I was expected to cover B and E section for 2 extra hours of pay.  Over 40 patients between the two sections.  A few staff doctors were present that evening and they bustled around very excited over one particular patient.  Generally, Staff Doctors are a rare sight in the evening.

This female was over 60 with diabetes and on dialysis.  This patient had a facial fungus stemming from her diabetes.  She was very thin and frail, with skins so thin that you could almost see through.  Her arms were bruised from being poked from multiple blood tests.  Her son was standing by the wall just watching unknowing (Like a deer caught in the headlights) what was going on with his mother.

I asked Jane the one RN on duty for E station why were the docs so excited?  Jane said that the docs were going to operate on the diabetic patient's face and surgically remove her facial fungus.  I asked what would that entail and her reply was that the docs would carve into her facial skin, nerves, muscles and bone tissue like an egg carton.  I was shocked and said that this patient was a diabetic, on dialysis and a very poor candidate for surgery because of the patient being a poor healer like all other diabetics.

Jane said that this had been done before to other patients.  "What's going to happen with her is that she'll be in a coma for 2 weeks and never regain consciousness," she told me.

When I went to see this woman her head was wrapped like a huge white helmet.  She was laying in S.I.C.U. with no one at her side.  I felt really strange knowing what the outcome of this woman's future was  Two weeks to the day after her surgery, in which she never woke up, she died.  An  experimental surgery on another diabetic patient .  The surgery was a success but the patient died.  That evening drained me mentally, I had leg and neck pain and was very tired. 

1986

Another PM shift at 10:30 P.M. where I had been given another 2 hours to work, but this time it was to file current lab slips into patient charts.  While I was filing, I noticed that patient's charts had piled up high on the station desk.  I just happened to go through them when I noticed that a patient had just been transferred from the operating room.  She was to be on a monitor.  I decided to transcribe the doctors orders and after checking them I discovered that this patient was supposed to be in the Telemetry unit as per doctor orders which is law and where the ratio of nurses to patients is higher.  As in 2 to 3 nurses per patient.

Here on the regular med-surg station it is 1 to 6 per patients.  The ideal on the med-surg floor is 1 nurse to 4 patients.  I yelled out to everyone that this patient was supposed to be in the Telemetry united and I called over to the operator and asked for a supervisor.  I called 3 times and got no response.  Let's see, 1 evening supervisor and 1 night supervisor and not one called back. 

One intern started laughing and said "That's Kaiser for you."  I said that was not funny.  And it wasn't!  It was the nurses change of shift.  To even attempt to talk to a nurse during a shift change is verboten, a crime and a sin!  I alerted everyone that I could and because it was time for me to leave, I left, knowing that I would not be approved for overtime. 

Even if you worked overtime you didn't get paid for it.  Again I went home exhausted and very very sad.  The next day I arrived at 3:30 PM and 2 nurses from B station approached me and said, "Did you hear about the patient in B3?"  I said no!  Why?  The nurses told me that the patient in B3 had died in the elevator on the way to the MICU at about 1 AM the previous morning. 

It had been another diabetic that had some toes removed and was a poor healer.   The surgery was a success but the poor patient died 2 hours after I alerted everyone at B station.  Someone had finally decided to transfer the patient to the unit that she should have been in at least 3 hours prior.  I was drained from this news.

One week later I went to tell Sally that it was too bad about that patient who was a diabetic that died before being transferred to where she originally belonged in the MICU and Sally said, "Oh Well!  She was a poor risk anyway."  I asked her why did they do surgery on poor risk patients that are diabetics and poor healers?  Sally didn't answer, shrugged her shoulders and left.  I felt befuddled, confused and concerned about the cavalier attitude of the nurse and the lack of concern for the patients. 

It was another evening of exhaustion.  I had so much leg and neck pain.

A year and a half earlier I had gone to my own doctor outside of Kaiser and he  had advised me that my sciatic nerve was causing the pain.  He said that it is an occupational disease from sitting or standing for long periods of time.  Well, that was me all right, but he never took me off of work.  I just kept on working the same way until February of 1988 and by that time I could not think or feel anymore. 

The doctor gave me Motrin for the leg pain.  It felt like it was eating a hole in my stomach and gave me a lot of gas.  I went out on stress leave.  I felt great despair, an unfamiliar feeling for me.  By this time I was experiencing fatigue, pain and an all around depression.  I had a hard time thinking and even moving.  I felt that I was going down a tunnel of bleakness that I had never known before.

February, 1988

On D Station there was a young HIV male patient who was very ill.  He sat in his room, very seldom coming out I mentioned to him to put the TV on and he said "What for?"  I said that at least he could listen to a radio and put a light on.  The next day when I came to work I found out that he had been sent to the MICU because he had laid in his own dried feces from having diarrhea all night long.  This is a neurological mishap with HIB patients.  But he was blamed for his mishap because he had HIV and the nurses said he had stacked his medication to commit suicide.  He had nurses belittling him and telling him that he would go to hell because he was a homosexual and had AIDS.  Nurses refused to take care of him because he had AIDS.  We was put on life support for 7 days and never recovered.  The day he was transferred to the MICU it was already too late!  I told Amy  that the D Station nurse had condemned him for being homosexual.  The doctors took him off of life support.  1986

HOSPICE

One of the wards that I worked were hospice.  Every other weekend I would transcribe doctors orders for some of the patients that have cancer who are receiving chemotherapy and pain meds.  Some leave alive, but many are carried out in hearses.  One evening the main pharmacist talked about how much morphine was going into a patient.  1200 mgms or 1 gram per hour. 

We were full that weekend.  Four female patients in their early 30's dying of cervical cancer, getting 1 gram of morphine every hour.  Barely touching their pain.  These patients were moaning out loud because of their horrendous pain which everyone could hear. 

The pharmacist said that it cost 36,000 per month to keep a patient in Morphine at 1 gram per hour.  He said it was too expensive to keep those patients in that kind of medicine! 

Then there is B.J., and RN who only lasted a short time as a supervisor because she didn't want to be like the other supervisors whose only concern is the budget, who administered a breathing machine for an elderly man who was dying of 
leukemia to make his last moments as comfortable as possible. 1986

1987 - Amy was the one supervisor who got a bad evaluation for not caring about how much it costs to take care of the patients.  Being a nurse first and a cost analyst last. B.J. I thanked for the beautiful life lesson of learning what true compassion is.  She taught me that it doesn't take much energy or time, just kindness and love for another human being.

We worked with outdated instruments and the oldest post World War II furniture in existence.  I asked Jan the Unit assistant supervisor for more hours to handle the patient load because all admits, pre-ops, post-ops, e.r. admits, cardiac surgery patients coming from other hospitals, transfers from the units and telemetry are coming in on the P.M. shift.  The PM shift has no staff doctors, mostly interns and resident.  Just like the weekends, no one around except for 1 - 2 doctors on call for the entire hospital.  324 beds.  This gives the phrase "Skeleton Crew" a whole new meaning.  Interns make life and death decisions on patients in the Cardiac unit.  In and out with a NG tube to check for a dying elderly man's gastric bleeding.  ONE more time intern so and so and you can do your own orders I once said.  The Intern looked at me with a HOW dare I even speak to him because he's an intern and I'm a lowly unit assistant.  No staff doctor to instruct the intern.  

All the patients have interns and resident docs taking care of patients medical needs while the staff doctors are off at 5:00 PM from their clinic appointments.  Staff doctors do come in the early origs sometimes but the patients are left with interns and residents who will leave in 3 months to go back to UC Davis and do the same thing there.  Revolving academic docs every three months.  Their residency lasts 1 year and internships are several years longer, always changing between the 2 hospitals and always changing patients.  Now there is a personal doctor/patient touch!

How about Barry D.O.G. who is 32 years old and is admitted with a multiple emboli, or multiple clots.  Dr. Livermore tells him that he has to take academic doctors (residents or interns) for care while in the hospital otherwise he'll die.  The next day he does die.  Is it because a learning doctor doesn't prescribe the right anti-coagulant?  Barry leaves a young wife and a 18 month old son.

D station was an ostomy ward, where patients had their intestine's operated on or removed and had a bag placed at the surgery site for fecal removal.  These ostomy bags had to be changed by the RN at every shift.  One night, there were 13 patients and 1 RN, Sue.  Sue had started crying about 4 hours into the shift and said that her license was on the line because she was attending 13 patients.  Against the law?  You bet!  The supervisor couldn't find the extra needed coverage.  Yeah Right!  By the time that we both went home, because I stayed upon the supervisor's request, we were both totally exhausted.  I had started to get severe leg and back pain and had constant headaches during this time period.

After the strike of late 1986, I came back to a new work area, the only unit assistant that is reassigned.  A station, the obstetrics and post maternity ward.  I hadn't worked in Maternity since I was trained.  Did I say trained?  I was supposed to be trained for 2 months and was only trained for 3 weeks and then the first place I went to was CCU where an experienced unit coordinator said that I needed more training.  In post partum/maternity after the 7 week strike is where they sent me.

Everyone was unfriendly after the strike and I was told to not talk about it or the union with anyone.  It was OK to talk about anything else but not anything having to do with union or union activities.  As I was told to work on other stations after the strike (I was so vocal about Kaiser during the strike, I even was quoted in the Sacramento Bee stating "OUR SPIRITS ARE BIGGER THAN THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS."  Boy!  Did I ever pay for that later!)

Nurses told me that Kaiser is a business and that Kaiser has a right to make money and that because Kaiser costs less money per patient that patients should not expect to get coverage like outside patients do!  Kaiser the K-MART of hospitals.

I said that no matter what the patient is paying 5 or 500 dollars, that every patient deserves to be treated equally!  Where have I been all these years thinking that we would all have the very best of health care.?  Certainly we were paying for it from our wages/benefit package or were we?

I told Jerry N. in a union/management meeting that patients were complaining about their lack of care in the hospitals.  He shrugged it off.  Management is uncaring and aloof with the problems that we brought to them.  Isn't that what the strike was all about?  Patient Care.  What happened to that stance I wondered.  The problems were getting worse and there was an air of agitation and intolerance.  We had a management union meeting and Jerry N. said that there would be no changes.  The union and the union stewards loudly voiced their discontent and I saw the nursing manager sit and twirl her hair.  Totally bored with the whole meeting!

Jerry N. took over in 1986-1987.  This was the beginning of the end.  He had an open door policy and any employee could come to him for any reason.  Ha!  What a laugh that was.  It was like going to the Gestapo.  If he didn't know who I was then he sure knows now!

Another co worker and I went to Jerry N. and Dr. Cliff S., and we told them that Jan is not doing her job and that we needed more employees, more hours and some fundamental changes concerning the unit assistants.  Boy!  We sure told them all right. 

Jan N. gets put into Special Projects.  That is a special position where all managers go before they get their golden handshake and then out the door.  Onward and upward they go to better and more powerful positions that will benefit Kaiser down the road.  The only handshake we lower employees get is disabled and destitute, while having to fight for whatever we have coming to us according to the labor laws and our contract. 

Did I say labor laws and contract?  I must have been dreaming again.

Not long after we were getting ready for THE strike, there were threats of more cutbacks and Kaiser wanted a two-tiered pay system.  There was talk about Jerry N., top administrator, Eddy B. for environmental services and Robert B. personnel director.  They were transferred from the Bay area hospitals to make further cuts.  Little did we know that the cuts were to be employees above all else.  These were the changes that management was really talking about during all those meetings that they were having when we couldn't find them for patient care.

A well planned effort to get rid of these employees is all that it was.  Overwork them, watch everything that they do and then criticize them for the work that is not being done.

I was feeling very uncomfortable and scare about what was going to happen to us employees.  We even were sent to see a psychologist in a union meeting.  It was very serious about what was going on with this possible and ever looming strike talk.  We considered this mental torture and harassment with overwork on top of it all!  The strike was the beginning of the end for all of us.

FEAR, FEAR, FEAR AND MORE FEAR!  One employee per department at a time, then a whole department would go!  Changing the departments names only to change them again.  Employees not getting their raises because the departments have changed supervisors and department names.  How clever!  Reducing employees as they go along, and Kaiser is saving money all through this.  No one to the wiser.

Restructuring and finally down sizing while TAKING ON MORE PATIENTS.  What happened to the reverse seniority contract language? The newer employees were supposed to be the first to get laid off!   But at Kaiser the older workers were first disciplined and then let go.

I used to work on D station, but they closed it down during the strike, only to reopen it later on.  Then they had a unit assistant cover both D Station and C station which is a pediatric ward.  I was having to go back and forth from med surg patients and then to pediatric patients.  Pedi is a special place and only a certain type of person can handle seeing very sick and dying children.  I wasn't one of those special people. 

Seeing a healthy looking baby with the most beautiful blond curls, and finding out that 30 month old child will only live about 2 more days because of a brain tumor that was just diagnosed the day before really got to me.  I wondered how many times the baby had been to the pedi doctors previously and no doctor could check his eyes or see other tell tale signs that something so big and ugly was growing inside of this little beautiful angel of God's!  I went home that night with such a heavy heart.  It was my day of the following day.  When I can to work two days later that precious little child was dead.  He had died the day that I was off!

One time there was a pedi doctor bending over me while I was checking doctors orders.  He was touching me so hard with whatever he had in his front pocket.  A nurse said maybe it was his keys!  In his front pocket!  I didn't know men had pockets in the center of their front pants!  In front of 3 nurses and nobody saw a thing!  What else don't they see?  What a terrible night that way.  If I didn't have any witnesses who would believe me? - 1987

One evening, Thelma the male transporter from the OR was watching me from the empty space between Station C and D.  I was getting a little uncomfortable about it but I just kept on working.  I had to go to the lab and Thelma stopped me to tell me that looking at my white breasts gave him a hard on!  I was shocked and very upset.  I went to Bob and Willie to tell them what Thelma had said and done.  Bob and Willie made me repeat what he said.  I had to repeat this to them more than one.  Finally I said to them "Don't you believe me?"  Nothing ever was said to me again about the incident.

Thelma also harassed Smiley, a female OR transporter at work and nothing was done about that either.  She asked me what to do and I told her that I would file a grievance and talk to management about it.  The union fails to do anything because one 250 member can't file a grievance against another 250 member.  How many times did I hear that excuse?  Sexual harassment gets ignored again at Kaiser.  Thelma is still working for Kaiser.  Smiley and I are not.

Linda K. and Terry B. both complained to management and the union about Chuck M. sexually harassing them in central supply for a long time.  There's a big union steward meeting and those 2 women voiced their complaints in front of all the hospital's show stewards.  Chuck was still working there and neither the union nor management do anything about this sexual harasser.  Linda and Terry complained in 1992 and Linda killed herself a short time later.  Terry told me that Linda took a gun and shot herself at home.

Chuck worked for another year and a half after that.  1992.

Terry said Linda was working nights while on strong anti-depressant medications and attending religious meetings somewhere in the hospital that was being presented by management and that she walked around like a zombie.  I have seen quite a few employees, including myself walk around like a zombie too!

How many employee's are put on pain meds tranquilizers, sleeping meds and anti-depressants?  Quite a few!  If an employee gets really lucky you can be prescribed all four of those whacko drugs and maybe some thorazine if you know more about the dirty laundry about Kaiser.

Terry complained to me that she was being exposed to a nitrous oxide leak coming from the wall on the other side of the operating room.  There are alarms that go on and off, to show the toxin in the air.  The hospital had been told to close this area down.  Kaiser did, but there was still a leak and it showed up on the alarm.

Victor knew about the leak too!  Terry tells me that she has lumps around the back of her neck and back.  She fears it is cancer.  I did some research on the health hazards of this leak and sure enough it is a carcinogen and it shows up in the same body parts that Terry told me about.  Terry is taking more time off and management is not disciplining her.  After awhile I stopped hearing from Terry.

The actual meeting was about the poor job Roy C. was doing as a union rep.  He used to be a lab plebotomist and now he's getting well over 40,000 dollars to single handedly ruin and destroy the employees with management's help. 

Getting a little ahead of myself here, but during the trustee takeover of the union thanks to Tim Twomey's misappropriation of over 800,000 dollars of union strike moneys, we then had a trustee, Phil, who was showing interest in wanting to make things better for us workers.  Roy was still employed as a lab tech.  Here is a meeting that Phil called to talk about what his vision is for local 250 members.

We haven't really had a good union since I've heard of in a while as told by the other workers or since I had been there and we needed decent union leadership. AND, ALL the while Roy sat next to Phil listening to every word as if recording the whole meeting.  A couple of months later, Phil is forced to resign as trustee and never to be able to run for President of our union.  Sal, the presidential competitor is fired but gets hired as a CNA )certified nursing assistant) to keep his status as a presidential candidate.

Sad time for the union members because we had lost someone who was concerned about the union members and our poor working conditions. 1988

Phil already was getting his name in the local newspaper about his opposition to Kaiser's managerial style. 1987  How dare anyone challenge Kaiser!  Well, Phil is out and Sal is in!  Roy gets to be a rep for a Kaiser facility.  How coincidental?!?  A union rep traded for a union president.  Sal says that he has the same vision as Phil.  We all got snookered into that one.  1988.  The union is worse than before Tim Twomey.  Sal ought to know, he was working for the union the whole time.  More older workers fired then in the union and Kaiser history and Toy is the union rep the whole time. 

We have to have sacrifices Roy C. says in 1992.  How many employees does that mean?  As many older workers as we can get rid of.  The union pretends to grieve the short staffing issues, the wage disparity, the harassment of the workers by management, the unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.....where did all those grievances go?  Roy works for the South Sac facility prior to the North Sac facility.  Six suicides occur in the years 1900-1991.  Four of them are 250 members.  Susan L., Olene S., Kim M.,3 OTHERS that Arlene F. knew about.  

Arlene was a union steward at that time.  Only 300 employees in that building but 6 suicides in a 2 year span and the union did do or dod not do what?  Another union rep says the union does not get involved with the suicides because it was only on 250 member.  Well it was more than one but every member should count.  Wasn't it the union who said that an injustice to one was an injustice to all!!!!!!!  Susan L. worked years for Kaiser who was promised a supervisory job after helping to open the South Sac building.  She never got that job.  She came to work with heavy makeup and her clothes were full of animal hair and they looked like she has slept in them.  She exhibited odd behavior like walking around like a zombie, but nobody even acknowledges she's acting different.  She killed herself.  One down and so many more to go-----1990-1991.

The RN's didn't go out on breaks nor did they take their lunches.  They would try to manage to eat at the station they worked, by grabbing bites of food in between patient care.  During the JACHO cleanup, a nursing supervisor threw out one of the nurse's lunch because it was at the station.  Not one time did the supervisors make sure that these nurses take time to eat their lunch or dinner or take breaks.  Sometimes I managed to take a break just before it was time for me to leave, and forget about going to the bathroom.  1986.

And what a filthy place it was.  The only time it got a mediocre cleaning was when JACHO came for an inspection to allow the hospital to stay open.  Jan tells me to clean all the dust on the chart holder.  I said that I am a unit assistant and not working in environmental services and that the chart case should have been cleaned every day, not just once a year. 1987.  Bugs flying around, like crickets, all over the place, everywhere you went, into the patient's rooms, into the lights where they stayed forever and rats running around the cafeteria, but that's OK because according to the environmental supervisor the rats don't eat much.  And lets not forget the bats that live at the South Sacramento facility.  More permanent than any patient or employee. 1986.

Or how about 40 or 50 patients being exposed to MRSC, an infection that kills anyone with a low immune lung problem like having pneumonia or leukemia.  No effective antibiotic drug can arrest the bacteria once in a patient that has a low immune system.  One day an executive administrator from Kaiser who lives in South Daly City, an area south of San Francisco resident (coming all the way to Sacramento for care?) is put into the room that wasn't cleaned or aerated for 24 hours, the standard infectious cleanup for MRSC and he has leukemia.  There were lots of patients who died of MRSC during that time. 1988.

Try and get a vacation or a day off.  Not enough coverage.  A supervisor tells an RN who wants to take off 2 weeks to go outside the country that he can have his vacation every other day!  What the supervisor said to do was for the RN to get his own coverage to cover him on the days he was scheduled to work.  Now I don't know about anybody else but this sounded ludicrous to the point of hysteria.  The RN was so shaken up because in order for him to see his family outside the country he was going to have to find someone to work for him for 10 days out of every other day.  I reminded him that it is management's job to get him coverage, and that what oncalls were for?  This happened after the strike.  Some of the nurses we're sympathetic to our cause but their nurse's association said that they could not honor our strike.  Some nurses took personal time off to walk on our picket line.  1986-1987.

One evening while working on D station the hospital is very active, and very rare, so what's going on?  Well the operating rooms are contaminated with a staph infection.  Everybody who had a surgery whether it was having a baby, a sinus surgery or an orthopedic surgery was infected and people who had been discharged were all having to be re-hospitalized.  Not enough beds so we have to open up all the closed wards.  How expensive was that for Kaiser?  Just like MRSC and staph, all you need to do is have enough personnel and a common cleaner called bleach and the hospital is clean as a hospital should be. 1986.

Patients would tell me that this hospital is filthy, who and where they should they call to complain?  I say call Oakland the head administrators, because nobody cares in this place.  Patient's footies are filthy from walking up and down the floors.  That's one way of cleaning this place called a hospital.  Patients don't even want to take showers because the bathrooms are so dirty.  One of the housekeepers tell me in the Camellia building where they keep post med-surg patients, hospice patients and the elderly from convalescent hospitals (That's what the Camellia building used to be - a convalescent hospital) that there was urine and fecal matter under the floor board of the bathrooms.  She complained but again nobody listens and nobody cares.  I make a complaint and it goes no where.  1985-88.

I work one evening and I called the environmental services because it was filthy at my work area and it smelled of vomit.  Eddy, the environmental supervisor who stands at least 6'3" in a cross your arms, stand apart the legs cop or military stance, says that the cleaning person can only clean certain areas, desks, chairs, and the unit assistant surrounding area not being any of them, the cleaning staff cannot move papers, which is understandable why the chart cases did not get cleaned.  That department was cut by at least 40 employees, 2 people to clean in the evening plus make and change beds for all those admits for all 324 beds.  On the weekends there was IV poles, empty beds, crash carts, wheel chairs all lined up in the hallways that were supposed to be free and clear for emergency evacuations.  1985-88.

The fire department came out one evening and had a fire drill, well neither the nurses or me on E station knew what to do.  Now that's embarrassing and dangerous.  1987.  How a flammable liquid running down the pipes in the in-between gaps of the hospital floors?  1987  Old Charlie told me one night that all this liquid had to do was roll down to an electrical connection and Boom!  1986.

Not a very comforting thought or a very safe place to work in.  The needle containers always getting full and not enough housekeepers to empty those containers.  Where do the needles get left, but on the floors, on the patients trays or tables, anywhere but where they're supposed to be.  The housekeepers getting needle stick injuries all the time because doctors and nurses do not make a strong complaint about having enough needle stick containers or at least have empty ones.  How many AIDS patients are there in a hospital or with hepatitis B or C or other infectious diseases.  But always make sure that one washes their hands and wear latex gloves!  Pray that you aren't allergic to the latex.  What a laugh!  1985-88.

I suggested that the unused area at D station be turned into a supply closet.  Great idea said Amy, but I didn't get credit for that.  Someone got the credit and the money for that, but it wasn't me.  I wrote several ideas that I didn't get credit for.  I had heard that the managers took the ideas for themselves and I am inclined to believe that because it was always the managers who received the accolades for all the ideas.  Even Jan asked me one time, "Did I think I was the first one to think of a particular idea?"  Why no I said!  But if someone else thought of it then why hadn't it been done already? 1986.

One evening, one home health nurse says that she went to a management meeting where Jerry N. the administrator and he informs everyone that they are going to have to do more with less.  What an oxymoron!  Moron being the operative word here.  We're already working with the barest of needs!  Doctors working without updated instruments.  Patients waiting and waiting to get a bed while laying in the corridors of the ER for hours upon hours at a time.  Nurses taking care of too many patients and other staff working too short of hours and too less staff period.  I said that this was an already impossible situation.  Well it did get worse.  Just when a person thinks it can't, it does.  1987.

I became a union steward because I was going to make things better for the unit assistants who are working too short of hours and short handed.  I scheduled many meetings with Jan and Denny to discuss the problems of the unit assistants.  Only that those meetings never occurred, because the supervisors always came up with excuses about the times we wanted those meetings and that there were too many unit assistants that would not be at all the stations.  ALL I ever asked for was 15 minutes to half an hour.  The supervisors and managers were always in meetings.  WHY were they always in meetings and unavailable to us?  An employee who needed them had a hard time finding them when they needed them to solve a problem.  Who was working full time and how many full time positions were there?  What was the schedule for the following week?  We need more time in the evenings and at the night shift.  How about doing some cross training so that employees could apply for other positions and give them more hours, well nice idea and somebody made money on that one, but it wasn't me.  I filed grievance after grievance and nothing but stonewalling on every work related issue I brought up.  I called Paula M. the union Rep and she undermined me in every meeting.  I told her that I applied for a job as a payroll/accountant clerk.  James gives the job to a male.  Jan doesn't want to, a union steward in that job!  Why not?  It's a 250 position!  Well I filed a grievance and I say I have at least 15 years experience in accounting and Jan and Paula say it has to be 6 months recent experience, well I've already been there not quite 3 years, so that leaves me out.  What happened to all that experience I had, it doesn't count for anything?????  Personnel and management write the position criteria for the ones they want in those positions.  Look at me I have  had a bid in for D station and Lo and Behold I was working at D station.  But it was a 20 hour not a 40 hours job.  How's that for saving money!  How many employees got cheated out of permanent and full-time jobs because Kaiser's higher ups wrote the policies anyway.  THE THEY WANTED.  Its not in the budget is all I ever heard  We need more housekeepers, transporters, lab techs, respiratory techs, pharmacy techs, hell!  We need more of everybody here.  We need more hours, more employees, more supplies, did I SAY supplies?  When you can't find sutures, forms, chest tube trays.  How long does it take to find a chest tube tray for some one who comes into the hospital with a collapsed lung.  Why didn't the ER doctors insert one?  The supply person worked only during the day just like most of the hospital ward positions.  That was part of my 4 hour evening job, searching for a chest tube tray.  Waiting, always waiting for a patient to be taken to an x-ray appointment, waiting to remove the body of someone who had died so that we can wait for the housekeeper to clean the room and make a new bed for a patient in ER or waiting for a medication to be delivered so a patient can go to surgery or waiting for a pain med for a patient after the surgery.  Waiting for admitting to assign a bed for each patient.  Waiting for a wheel chair.  Always waiting.  Saving money with time waiting.........12-1986.87-88.

Jan comes up with a new policy that is very important compared to what we really need and that is we will all sign documents with military time, instead of civilian time.  Why?  I ask.  We're a private company.  Everybody used the military time except for me.  I wasn't used to it.  It took too much time out of my day to figure and write it out.  I was chastised by Jan because I wasn't writing the time down military time like everybody else.  How many supervisors and managers were ex-military or currently military personnel at Kaiser?  Quite a few as it turns out!  Even Jan was ex-military.  She never called me by my first name.  It was always HEY!  PADILLA!  Down the hallways so everybody can hear including the patients.  Again!  No professionalism!  1985-1988.  We have military language used in our policies, evaluations and even our contract book.  Direct order, insubordinate, discipline, AWOL, absent without leave  LOA (leave without pay), abandonment of job.  A new word now being used is deploy.  Who in the hell am aI working for?  I don't know!  This is a private sector job!  Nobody told me I was working for a military or a paramilitary employer!  I honestly don't know who Kaiser is!  1988 through 1993.  Strike time in early 1986.  Getting ready for only God knows what!  Never been on on strike before, never even belonged to a union either.  We're going to strike if we don't get patients better care.  Biggest laugh of all.  Only to me this wasn't a funny.  Patients weren't getting their needs met.  Trying to do 3 jobs at once and in half the time.

Management calling us 250 union members into meetings. telling us that why we shouldn't strike.  That people do live on 5 dollars an hour.  Jan N. says, she has a member of her family that is able to make it on that kind of money per hour.  I asked Jan if it was her children were living with her making 5 bucks an hour?  That didn't go over to well in that meeting.  We don't want the two-tiered system where someone doing the same job as us will be getting a lot less pay and never be able to catch up in the wage scale.  I never heard of a two-tiered system but then again I never worked for a place like Kaiser nor did I ever belong to a union before.  This is all new to me and we are going to do something about the conditions in which we work and we are going to make it better for the patients too!  Was this a dream that I had while I was sleeping?  May through October 1986.

We go on strike and we are getting 60 dollar strike pay per week.  Not bad, considering I was bringing home about 5 times that and that's only for part time.  The union telling us that Kaiser is not budging from its original contract offer, we burrow in like moles and walk the picket lines around all 20 plus facilities.  Politicians get involved but nothing much happens except that Kaiser should settle soon and end the strike.  Big deal!  How many of the legislators were patients of Kaiser's?  Not many, I can guarantee that!  Slowly the union members start trickling back to work joining the scabs who were making lots of overtime.  Doctor and nurses working over 16 hours per day and according to their contracts with Kaiser the docs will do whatever is necessary.  When we had appointments with out own doctors we were followed around like we were criminals.  On the outside we had to be civilized strikers but inside management was anything but civilized having us escorted out the doors by newly hired security guards.  How much money did that cost?  I see a doctor who says I've been duped by the union.  I tell her that she's the one who has to work 14-16 hours a day and be away from her baby.  We're all getting duped I tell her. 11-1986.

The union says that no HMO like Kaiser can collect more than 2 monthly premiums from patients or employers without giving them patient care including doctor appointments.  All elective surgeries were canceled and no appointments are made.  Only urgent appointments and emergency care is being given. 1986 (We have a fund raiser dance for the union members to raise money for union members who are having a hard time financially.  Some members take part-time jobs to make ends meet.  Oh that fund raiser, well somebody stole the money and somebody says it is somebody that is employed by the union.  Over 2600.00 dollars gone!  Why were the union members giving their own money to those who were like themselves, on strike and out of cash?  A union member gets into a fight with one of the union members husbands because he asks where is your union money!  He gets hell by a union member who is real close to the union reps because he asked the right question.)

The strike money starts disappearing.  Every body had been asking where is the strike money?  Well, Tim Twomey isn't a very good bookkeeper and only over 800,000 dollars is gone!  (Tim Twomey is gone after the strike and goes to work for United Way.)  The international says don't worry because we, the union members will be able to pay it back again with interest, totaling over 1,3000,000 dollars.  The international only took about 33% of our dues anyway.  That's about 7 dollars per person every month.  Lots of money and we're going to have to pay the missing strike fund with back interest.  SUCH A DEAL!!!!  We have a 3rd meeting with the union because Kaiser is making their final offer.  We vote on paper with PENCILED in check marks. I voted no again.  Another union steward admonishes me for voting no and with a accusatory tone asked if I want to financially support other strikers.  I say No.  I am entitled to vote the way I want. 7 and a half weeks of walking and worrying about our financial status.  What is it going to be like when we go back in?  How are we going to be treated.  With hostility and contempt.  What will be new?  Just more out in the open!  Kaiser's bacon is saved from the legislative process often keeping patients from seeing their doctors in 60 days.  How much money did Kaiser collect and save in a little more than 7 weeks.  Plenty and only the beginning!  We are the lower level of employees, we do not mean a thing to management, expendable and throwaway employees.  We are patients too!

One by one we all start to feel the strain of extra work.  The two-tier wage scale was in place at Kaiser.  Patients getting less then they did before the strike.  Worker's complaining to management and no one listens.  The positions start evaporating and less people are working then before the strike.  The managers are cracking down on anyone who has taken any of their own sick leave.  No more than a day a month even if you have 1500 hours of sick leave accumulated.  Termination's are starting to take place.  

All it takes is an accusation, no proof, no investigations, just all somebody has to do is accuse, unless you really are a sexual harasser or an abusive or lazy manager or a manager who takes drugs.  Employees who start to work after the strike are resentful and complain that they don't have to work as hard because they don't get paid as much as we do!  I say that's one of the reasons we walked the strike line for!  Oh!  One new workers says, but it doesn't mean anything to anyone because the new people care less then the ones who worked decades, the ones who had skills and experience, who know all the short cuts and fastest ways to get things done.  Those folks were on their way out.  One could feel it.  No more unity and no more camaraderie.  No more of that close knit family feeling.  

Employees were resentful of the ones who crossed the picket line, the ones who joined the scabs, the ones who were your buddies for years, the ones you came to rely on.  All that gone!  Doctor, nurses, hospital employees all against one another and it took a strike that was supposed to improve patient health care and with that start a 2-3 tiered system to accomplish an environment of distrust and fear.  Now comes the real reason for the two-tier.  

Create dissension and split the troops.  Get rid of the older workers, they're asking too much money and have too many benefits like medical care and retirement fund.  Kaiser doesn't want to pay the high wages and doesn't want employees to be able to cash in on their pension funds.  Keep a revolving door of employees and the most it will cost is on call pay with a two-tier package.  Big deal!!!  Less and less permanent employees and most of those older employees are gone within the next few years.  Never such an exodus of workers leaving out of Kaiser and we the union members can thank the union 250 for forgetting who they were supposed to represent.  

Patients totally unaware that their medical care is being compromised because of the skilled workers being railroaded out of their jobs that they had for so long with skills and experience that could never be replicated again.  A trust never to be known again towards each other and towards Kaiser. 1986.

I am working on E station, the p.m. shift and transcribed doctors orders and here comes Dr. R.  He is of Italian descent and from New York City, speaking Italian to me.  Only its what he's saying that' is so unbelievable.  He repeats the phrase "manga la gotts" three times.  "Manga la gotts" Manga la gotts," Manga la gotts."  Nobody but him and me at the immediate desk area.  Without even picking up my head, I say I'm from Chicago and I know some Italian and I understand what he just said.  What it means is "eat my balls"!  Why me?  Why did he have to say that to me?  I ask the nurses if they heard what he said.  Of course they say NO!  Where did he go????
He disappeared into thin air it seems to me.  I see Dr R. every so often and he looks at me sideways, never a front on glance.  He never spoke to me ever again. 1987.

I hear yelling at the doorway of a patient.  Two male doctors yelling at a female doctor.  The males are insulting her and yelling loud enough for everyone to hear including patients.  I walked around my desk to the doorway of a patient and I see Doctor R. and Doctor G. yelling at the female doctor.  The 2 male doctors see me and walk away.  What a lack of professionalism and consideration of the patients and 2 males ganging up on a woman!  That female doctor wasn't there too long after that.  She left.  She had more sense than most. 1987.

I am working the last 2 hours of my shift and filing lab slips up in the tower part of the hospital.  I see a female patient caught up in the bed rails.  She's been posed (restrained) and had wrangled herself into a pretzel like position.  I alert the nurse for that room that the patient is in a dangerous way.  The patient stays that way the whole time I'm filing those lab slips.  I have to file lab slips in this women's chart and I see that she has been diagnosed with more syndromes than I have fingers.  How can one person have all these syndromes?  It's a medical impossibility or a medical first.  I look a little further and I discover she's on numerous amounts of meds all given by different doctors, interns and residents!

I've done the orders.  I've seen the orders get changed many times during the evening and the weekends by interns and resident.  One doctor says give this patient a med only for another learning doctor to come along and change the order to another medication.  The patients are nothing but experiments for these academic staff!  And no staff doctor available to monitor their medical decisions.  Dr. A tells me one evening that patients should be admitted to the hospital by a staff doctor in in the ER.  He was visibly angry because these patients were being admitted by interns and residents.  He says that the forms for admitting are showing unlicensed medical personnel.  1987.  Non-licensed doctors practicing medicine on patients who are totally unaware that interns and resident aren't real doctors yet.

What does that say for those who have to have surgery during the evenings and weekends?  I saw mostly interns and residents at those times.  One resident saying he sleeps one hour between every surgery he does.  Is he actually alert and cognizant of what he's doing while operating on these patients?  Where were the staff licensed doctors that were supposed to be performing licensed medical care?  It still goes on today, where students and doctors are interchanged from UC DAVIS and Kaiser.  Revolving docs.  What a savings to Kaiser and what a shameful way to treat patients.....

I managed to have several meetings with Jan and they never did accomplish anything positive for us workers.  One particular time, I had started questioning her on a contract language paragraph and what it meant and she started to complain of a severe headache.  I asked her if there was anything I could do and she said no.  Apparently her headache got worse, because she canceled the meeting, but not without me contacting the hospital supervisor and a little later Jan was wheeled out in a wheel chair and taken to the ER by Dan Tse. S.  He later thanked me for being so concerned about Jan to notify the hospital Supervisor.  

Actually Jan was taken care of faster than any other patient that needs care.  At another meeting she developed a rash on both palms of her hands and wouldn't let me get a supervisor that time.  I never did see a rash.  And maybe that evil look she gave me while being wheeled out of her office was because she had faked the headache like she faked the rash, all because she didn't want to address employee problems.  Jan was supposed to have as many full time positions as possible and she didn't.  The work schedules were made up of mostly part-time employees wages meant lower retirement benefits and less medical benefits.  Less pay for the part timers and certainly keep the necessary overtime at a complete stop.  When I called Paula the union Rep to attend meetings, Jan never showed any worry as a manager violating contract bargaining language.  

I remember Paula backing me into a wall, telling me that we had to deal with Jan differently.  I never saw any dealings with Jan by the union period.

Roy C. told me that I am hitting the managers over the head with my style of union work.  I never touched any manager nor was I ever uncivil.  totally professional.  I figured it out though, it was what I said the content of the grievance, not the way I presented my grievances. 1987

The nurses always complaining about the amount of work they have to do and that there is no time to give a patient a message or help them to the bathroom or assist them bodily.  Supervisors determining if a patient is A,B,C, or D.  A being the highest in need of more nursing care.  Add up the letter's of their condition and the type of treatment versus the actual care needed.  What a joke that is.  Are you breathing, OK!  The patient can be moved again and then discharged all in the same day.  Patients cannot even hardly walk and out the hospital door they go.  

Today, patient's needs are determined by the amount of hours their condition requires.  No extra time given if the patient's needs are needing extra care or if something changes.  Just like a factory.  A medical care assembly line.  Sounds very familiar to me.  Do everything faster no matter what the patient needs and forget that the patient needs that comfort and safe feeling that promotes faster healing.  Many surgeries are done in an out patient clinic, where the patient goes home and the family attends the patient's care even though the family has never been in the medical field.  1985-86-87-88.

I am exhausted all the time and in so much pain.  I go home at night and forget to get off the freeway that leads to my home.  10 minutes past my turnoff.  Where was my mind?  I didn't know.  I was scared, frightened and feelings of isolation creeping over me and nobody notices.  I used to come to work with really nice clothes under my lab coat.  I wore makeup, my hair always looking good and even wore some jewelry that would match my clothes.  About 6 months before I left the hospital other female employees started to dress better.  But I was starting to wear the bare minimum of makeup and putting my hair up.  My  attire was acceptable.  My poor girls at home were losing their mother to a black hole of depression.  I didn't want talk because it took too much energy, to which I didn't have any of.

I was just in this very painful mind and body and unable to get away from this bottomless pit of misery.  Why wasn't anybody else feeling this way?  But there were others feeling this way, only like me they didn't have the energy to be able to speak about it and they were afraid to speak to anybody because they didn't know who would snitch on them for talking about what was going on and that was the key about fear.  When in fear you do not speak.  No speaking of the horrors you see or speak about the crummy working conditions or not speak about the harassing supervisors.  We were unable to speak and dared not speak so that nobody knows all the wrongs that are going on.  Heads are down and no one talks.  I see employees walking close to the walls, including myself, either I'm afraid or I want to get out, maybe both! 1988

It is amazing what doesn't get said about the poor patient care being given to the patients.  When you are depressed, anxious and in fear of losing your job, the lie about the good care of patients keeps from being exposed!  After the strike we the older workers were feeling down because we knew that we had lost the two-tier fight and the care of the patients were going to be worse even though that was one of the biggest issues given to the general public by the union.  Patient care was the mantra all through the strike.  

Patient care was never really the issue, because patient's health have been compromised again and again and it continues today.  Management has an in your face hostile attitude and treating us like we are dogs.  Fear starts setting in.  Everything we do is being scrutinized and reported.  Afraid to say anything, afraid to do anything.  Even when we talk amongst ourselves we are being watched.  more about that later in the clinical aspect of my job.  Since when is being sick a disciplinarian matter when sick leave is a benefit I ask the union?  Management says sick leave is like having insurance for when you really need it.  Try and collect on insurance premiums and employees were getting discipline no matter why they were taking off.

Every day off cost Kaiser money.  Are we in a hospital or are we in a prison?  It doesn't feel like a hospital but it does feel like a prison to me.  Workers are starting to call in sick.  Managers are starting to discipline those who are taking off.  Sick leave which is one of our benefits are now starting to become disciplinarian actions.  Never before was sick leave an issue.  Joe has 1500 hours of sick leave and the management wants to write him up because he has taken more than 24 hours in 3 months.  It was about 27 hours in 3 months.

We are told we only are allowed to take off 8 hours per month.  They also calculate hours off per hours worked.  Maybe we can take vacation time off.

Do you need surgery and have to be off for 6 weeks?  Well expect discipline.  Our medical needs are being put off because we don't want to be disciplined for anything, we don't want to lose our jobs.  Job performance evaluations are now starting to surface.  Rarely did we get our yearly performance evaluations, but we are starting to get them now.  I knew one gal who hadn't had an evaluation in 11 years.  That was the norm then.  After working for years our permanence grades are being lowered.  We as employees are not performing as well as we did before.  We had to wait till after the strike and those who were active during the strike were the ones getting the poor evaluations.  The only time poor patient care comes up is on your evaluation.  What!  I am overworked and doing the work in half the time I am allotted and now it is our fault that the patients aren't getting good care?

I am now seeing a therapist and a medical doctor for my depression and my orthopedic problems.  Finally in February 1988 I cannot go to work anymore.  My body feels like it weighs a ton.  I am in so much pain and I am very tired.  I file a worker comp stress claim and it is really the beginning of an on going nightmare that continues today.

My own doctor outside of Kaiser doesn't want to be a part of the worker comp system.  Too much paperwork.  The doc has told me that several times during my visits to him as a patient.  So what is left is my stress part of the claim.  My therapist who has seen at least 20 Kaiser employees is the only one who knows of my pain and the only one who seems to care.  I see a psychiatrist in conjunction with my therapist, but I am going down in a deep depression.  Hitting bottom in depression is perhaps one of the most unbelievable experiences any one can have.  I cannot believe that I have to experience this depression as well as being an employee and witnessing the wrongs.  A double whammy or is it just the fallout of being in an inhumane hospital?  Who cares?  No body it seems.  

Kaiser disputes my claim and I have to file for state disability to provide some financial income on my family's behalf.  My daughters are only 9 and 6 years old.  How could they possibly understand what's happening to their Mommy and my husband doesn't understand at all what I'm going through.  Nothing gets done at home and I am on a anti depressant which makes me feel like a candied gummy bear.  I get up in physical pain and deep depression and take my girls to school.  Then I sit in a chair in front  of the television all day unaware of what programs are on.  The house is a mess, the laundry is stacking up and no dinner for this family.

One day I wake up and start crying.  I can't stop and I cry for 2 days.  I am looking out the window and my husband is looking into my eyes as if to say "What is wrong and why are you crying?"  I am still crying and sobbing with tears and I look at him and raise my shoulders as if to say "I don't know!  I don't know!"

I didn't know and I still don't, except that maybe the pain was trying to come out of me  one way or another.

I had worked at another hospital in Chicago in 1971 and a doctor's office in Sacramento in 1974 and I never experienced the madness in a health facility like I did at Kaiser.  Again, was this really a hospital that I worked in or some kind of torture chamber?  Patients are just part of a well structured system designed to keep the money coming in.

About one year later I tried to get back to work, but the worker comp company said that I had to clear it with personnel.  Personnel said that I had to clear it with the worker comp people.  I haven't even received any worker compensation.  I even took a national test to get certified as a Medical Assistant to get another type of job in the Kaiser clinics.  I had been trying to apply for receptionist, phone clerk and accounting clerk while working in the hospital clinics but I had been denied because of whatever restrictions they wrote up.  Had to have a recent experience or certified by another school or I was not in the department already and or I did not have the seniority.  Now I was a certified medical assistant and I called the union and the union refused to respond.

In March of '89 I got fired because I am one year off of work on a worker comp leave that the contract language is interpreted to fire me.  It happens to everyone who is off 1 year and even then the exodus of injured workers being off of work even one year or less then a year starts.  Who knew that it would get so bad.  I didn't because otherwise I would have never gone back to work in the clinic.  I try to find another job as a medical assistant and or anything else similar. I can't find anything and then I call the union and tell them that I want to know what to do to keep this from happening to anyone else and that the union rep did not represent me when I was looking to get into the Kaiser Clinic.  (The union president Sal says what can the union do for me after I mention this shouldn't happen to another employee and that I'm thinking about suing the union.  Probably the only time I ever got his full attention?  He wants me to write a letter about the union rep and how the union rep didn't even go to the employment hearing  which I had to fight all the way to the appeals.)

I did win, but it was a fight and the usual for Kaiser.  Kaiser fought everything when a worker needed their benefits, retirement, etc.  That's their method of operation.  spend money on patient's?  Spend money on wages or benefits or anything that the employee was entitled to?  Am I crazy to expect that from an employer like Kaiser?  But Kaiser can sure spend money to employ many attorneys to fight the employees and the patients!  Boy!  Do they spend the money for that.  And where does all that money come from.

From other employers like the private sector, the civilian military employees, the state workers, the federal and state government themselves.  Billions of dollars and millions being spent on fighting employees and patients.  Did I mention that we were patients too?  We were, but there was never an amount that we know of on what our medical and dental benefits cost or even what was in our retirement.  Nothing anywhere, but only our wages and we even get cheated out of that through the years, by denying overtime when actually we worked for the overtime.

Changing departments so that people's wage grades and steps were forgotten.  Did we actually ever expect to get promoted to a higher live.  How many men were brought into management over the female employees?  Too few female supervisors.  Men that were ex military lording over the female employees who never got promoted.  Trying to transfer to another department was an impossible feat in itself.  Performance evaluations, sick leave were being used against us to keep from transferring to another department.  Why didn't they want us to go to another department or work for another doctor?  They would not be able to keep track of us that way.  And they had to keep track of the ones they needed to get rid of.  Yet!  That's us older workers, for starters.  

Even employees who had float positions were being forced into accepting permanent places to work.  They needed the employees expertise, they needed continuity that the older worker could provide for the betterment of the patients.  What a crock!!!!!!  They wanted to pigeonhole the older workers who were making the most money and they needed to be able to have them corralled to better watch them, to report their every move so the could harass them and over work them until they filed a stress claim.  The beginning of the end for us older and best paid workers.  Mostly female, minority, older, union and newly disabled and union workers. 1988

Patty's father died and his funeral was to be in another state some distance away.  I stop by B station and I see that she is still working.  She's supposed to be at her father's funeral.  I asked her why she isn't in Texas and she said that Jan had said Kaiser needed her to work and not take off the 5 days paid bereavement leave.  Can you imagine that Jan actually talked Patty into working for Kaiser, which was so much more important than attending her own father's funeral because there wasn't much Patty could do for her father.  He was already dad!  I asked for a meeting with Jan and I never got one.  I complained to the nursing director about what Jan did to Patty, the outrage of it all, a person made to feel guilty to work and forgo her own grief and not be able to say her final good-bye to her father and no reply from management.  5 days of paid leave is saved for Kaiser.  Patty was somewhat quiet and docile after that and left Kaiser's employ not too long after that incident.  I was furious with Jan for a long time because she negatively manipulated Patty while she was in such a vulnerable state of mind.,  Heartless is the word that comes to mind. 1987

I am waiting for the union to call me back, because I find out that I can get back to work within 6 months of my first termination, then I'll be able to retain all of my original benefits.  Well I retained only my seniority date and I have to start over as a new employee.  Even my seniority beginning date of hire is different every time I fill out a bid to transfer, which I find out during the civil suit  What a job the  union did for me.  Zero!  Nada! Zilch!  The usual.  Absolutely nothing which is what we are paying union due for.  Nothing!

I worked with Elsie, an RN who knows her stuff.  She's a very good nurse and doesn't take any guff off of anyone, even the doctors.  She educated an intern about a certain treatment that was given to the patient and tells him that it was the wrong treatment.  Elsie is not liked by the male intern and she is black.  A white male lab tech attacked Elsie out in the parking lot and she managed to pull his sweater over his head to get away from him.  Elsie was disciplined as well as the white lab tech.  All because employees are being worked to death and she is trying to protect herself.  Elsie left Kaiser.  One of the best nurses at Kaiser.  They lost her because they sided with the males. 

I also worked with Shirley, who harassed another HIV patient.  Always adding snipes about his sex life and his homosexuality and his HIV.  I told her one day that she shouldn't eat his pizza if she scolds him for being HIV and being gay.  Shirley didn't like that and I became her target.  Always sniping at me with mean and nasty remarks.  I defended myself but she became relentless.  Finally I talked to Amy and told her what Shirley had been doing.  Amy must have said something, because Shirley left me alone after that.  The atmosphere was very cold on top of everything else.

We had a short nurse who's name is Caroline.  She was usually the one who was called to do special nursing care like when a patient is to be monitored 1-1.  Caroline was often assigned to the BLUE ROOM.  This room usually consisted of 3 patients who were affected neurologically, as in a coma!  I would see Caroline making beds with patients, male and female by herself.  Seeing her climb over the patient to get the bed made was quite a feat for her small frame.  I asked her one time to get another nurse to help her and she said no one would help, not even to relive her to go to the bathroom or take a lunch break.  Caroline did this for many years.  After another nurse Lisa was given that assignment in 1996 and was never trained for that particular care.  Lisa severely hurt her back and till today is unable to go back to work.  I often wonder what happened to Caroline.  She was a special nurse.  On her lighter assignments she would be in Pediatrics taking care of babies that no one came to visit who were in severe medical need of care. 1985-1988

One evening, while working in Pedi, I was doing the doctors orders when I heard this metal sounding whoosh go over my head and I saw a metal coffee lid land in the trash basket next to me.  I looked at this coffee lid which was like a huge round razor blade and I asked the nurses "who flung it over my head?"  First nobody answered and I asked again.  Then finally the nurse who threw it said that it was her. I asked her why she flung something so dangerous over my head.  She nonchalantly answered she didn't think of it as a dangerous move.  Well.  I said I did and that it was very stupid of her and that when the housekeepers came to empty the trash cans, all they had to do was grab the plastic trash bag and they would be cut so bad that a hand or fingers or all could be cut off.  No comment from her!  This was a nurse with several years of college and experience and she doesn't respond to what she did as dangerous and neglectful and very very stupid. 1987

I went to H station and I am told by a nurse that a patient is getting a debridement every day without an anesthetic.  The patient is diabetic and had to have this done after a gall bladder surgery because she is not healing and her tissue is necrotic.  The nurse is very concerned because the woman is of spanish descent and worried that she is afraid to question the doctor.  This is very painful and it means cutting into live tissue as well as the dead tissue.  I find out that this woman is a very close relative to my husband.  The nurse also says that maybe I can relate to this patient and tell her that it is alright for her to ask for a pain killer.  She's going to be in the hospital for 6-8 weeks having to have this done everyday.   More money saved by not using painkillers and or is this method of treatment that's just downright mean.  The doctor doing this treatment is now a very famous doctor and is known nationally.

I worked with a male nurse on H station and occasionally he comes over to D.  It depends on what stations they have closed to keep from bringing in more nurses.  Just like Caroline being moved all the time and there never being enough nurses for all these patients.  Anyway, Hal's behavior is getting abusive, constantly angry, demanding and short with his co-workers.  One night he calls the nursing supervisor when he's drunk and tells her off and then quits.  Just like the unit assistants, the nurses are finally starting to fall apart.  We have a male housekeeper who comes in and steals drugs and needles from the pedi-ward.  He worked there for years, now he's stealing drugs from where he worked.  These men aren't the only ones who are drinking and doing drugs.  Heck, one can get all the meds they need from their employer.  Many female employees are being drugged out of their minds and it is being done legally by their very own employer! 1987-88-89-90-91-93...........

I worked with Arlene only several months after I started at Kaiser.  She  was in her sixties and had taught the Unit Assistant class that I attended.  Arlene was from Massachusetts and a very educated lady.  She commanded perfection in what she taught and what she did on her job.  I remember her telling me that I should look for a job elsewhere other than Kaiser and perhaps I should've listened to her.  She transferred to the South Sacramento facility and that's where I wanted to go because I felt that at least I would have one person who I could relate to and learn from.  I admired Arlene because she was one of the strongest spirited women I had know.  But that never happened because my evaluation wasn't done in time.  I also wanted to work days so I could be at home more around my girls.  I was missing them and they were calling me Dad, which meant I was hardly around for them.  I was around even less after I went into that awful depression.  My girls, who didn't have much of a mother away at work or at home either.  I don't remember too much from 2-88 to 8-89, except that I was in a lot of pain and just trying to cope with everyday life without just wanting to die.  My girls needed their mother even the way I was and its because of them that I survived.  They forced me into doing the things that were necessary in order for them to survive.  They make fun of me now and remind me every once in a while of what I looked like and what I sounded like, being in the black hole of depression. 

It is a funny thing, but I still can't remember what I thought or what I felt for over a year.  Just a few memories of existence.  Maybe that's what depression and meds do to you, they erase the very being and the very soul of yourself of who you are and what you are.  There were so many like me to come in the near future and I know that even then I wasn't alone and there wasn't anything that I could do about it.  It just swallows you up!  I told Rocky one day that I cannot do this anymore and he took me off work!!!!!

I even started taking singing lessons, singing was one of the important parts of life to me just like dancing and playing musical instruments.  I went to sing for an half an hour per week and the instructor, a local singer, tells me that her daughter lost her baby at Kaiser.  Her father, a local musician says his daughter just fell through the cracks of the Kaiser system trying to vilify that his daughter wasn't intentionally harmed.  Does anyone have any idea just how many patients fall through those cracks?  I remember looking at him, trying to explain what goes on at Kaiser and I feel this frozen fear take a hold of me and I am petrified and scared to tell him all the horrors that go on and that Kaiser doesn't care about his daughter or their lost grandchild.  I try several times during my sessions to tell him and his wife but it is so very hard for the words to come out.  Why am I so afraid to speak the truth?  Will anybody believe me or will everybody just think I am nuts?  I stopped going to those singing sessions because I was gripped with fear and I was being reminded of what I had seen at Kaiser and it was driving me even further into the black hole. 1988
 
  Dina may be reached via e-mail at: dinapadilla@kaiserpapers.info