Union workers at Maui Health hospitals plan to strike in 10 days if contract talks still tied up

Hundreds of health care workers on Maui and Lāna‘i say they plan to strike for three days as frustration simmers about lack of staffing and unresolved contract talks. 

The union that represents about 930 workers at Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital and Lāna‘i Community Hospital announced that staff intend to walk out Nov. 4-6. A 10-day notice of a strike due to unfair labor practices was delivered Thursday during bargaining talks. 

“This isn’t just about us. This is about our community,” Stephanie Castro, an outpatient clinic clerk at Maui Memorial, told the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative on Thursday. “This is about our families and our future of health care. … We need to take a stand for what we know is right and better for our community and our families.”

The United Nurses and Health Care Employees of Hawai‘i union claims that management officials with hospital operator Maui Health “have threatened Maui Memorial workers for protected union activities, have instituted an unlawfully punitive and overbroad social media policy, and surveilled workers.”

Contract discussions between Maui Health and the union have been going on since July. In September, with their contract set to expire at the end of the month, union members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if necessary. 

Maui Health CEO Lynn Fulton said Thursday evening that the unfair labor practices “are generic in nature and unclear,” and that “Maui Health has no idea of what we allegedly did wrong.”

Fulton expressed disappointment over the strike notice, “given that we have made steady progress.” She said the notice does not necessarily mean a strike will happen, and that if patients are impacted, they will be contacted directly by Maui Health or their physician’s office. All Maui Health facilities will remain open. 

“Our highest priority is the health, safety and well-being of our patients and residents,” Fulton said in a statement. “In the unfortunate event of a strike, we have contingency plans in place to ensure the best care for our patients and residents. This includes a temporary workforce of experienced, highly qualified healthcare professionals who will work with the rest of our team during the strike and for as long as needed.”

The two sides have met 16 times in 14 weeks. More talks are scheduled for Friday and Saturday, and Fulton said there are agreements in place for almost all non-economic issues, allowing them to focus now on wages, benefits and staffing. 

Those are the top issues for union workers at the hospital.

Napua Aloy, who’s been a registered nurse at Maui Memorial for 16 years, is caught in a Catch 22 of having to work extra hours to afford living on Maui and coping with the burnout that comes with additional shifts. 

Aloy was born at Maui Memorial. So were her daughter and two sons, former Baldwin High School baseball standouts Wehiwa and Kuhio. Working in the hospital’s labor and delivery unit feels like a “dream job.” But that’s getting harder with the short-staffing. Workers have been asked to volunteer for extra shifts, and sometimes they’ll get called in if a situation escalates and there’s not enough staff. 

“We’re more than happy to because … we want to be there. We want to help,” Aloy told the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative Thursday. “It’s emotional and disheartening at the point that we’re at where we have to take this stand (to strike), but it’s for the better.”

Aloy and her husband, an office administrator, have one child at Kamehameha Schools and two others in college in Arkansas. She wants to retire on Maui and stay here for good, but living costs keep going up and health care workers keep leaving the hospital for better-paying jobs on other islands or the Mainland. Aloy hasn’t applied for other jobs because she already works so much at her current one, but she admits “it’s tempting.” 

Like Aloy, Castro worries about her paycheck covering the cost of living. She previously worked as a clerk in the Maui Memorial Emergency Department from 2018 to 2019. After her father had a brain bleed on O‘ahu and short-staffing at Queen’s Medical Center forced them to wait 45 minutes before he got care, Castro decided to return to health care. The surgeon told Castro that she saved her father’s life by advocating for him to be seen, and she feels she belongs in the hospital looking out for other patients and families. 

That’s despite having to take a pay cut of about $10 per hour when she returned to Maui Memorial in April. Castro said she’s on the “lower end of the spectrum” for wages, and she worries about the next generation of students who want to get into health care, including her son, a senior at Kamehameha who dreams of becoming a cardiothoracic surgeon and bringing his talents home to Maui.  

“As a mom, I want to support him wherever he wants to go,” said Castro, trying to hold back tears. “But my biggest concern right now is how am I going to pay for it?”

Castro is trying to start her own business on the side and is grateful her spouse also has a job as a rental manager at a commercial trucking company. However, she said some of her co-workers don’t have a second household income and have to juggle multiple jobs. 

Both Castro and Aloy say it’s hard not to make comparisons to higher Kaiser salaries when Maui Health, a Kaiser affiliate, draws from Kaiser procedures and policies. Even phone reminders to patients come with a Kaiser caller ID, Castro said. 

Maui Health continues to maintain that it’s a separate employer from Kaiser Permanente. It handles day-to-day operations for all hospitals and clinics, and it contracts Kaiser for “back office support” in areas that include technology, electronic medical records, supply chains and purchasing. But Maui Memorial continues to operate independently as a community-based hospital.

According to Fulton, the hospitals’ nursing teams decide staffing for each unit based on the daily census and current mix of patients and employees, including patient acuity and volume. 

“We share the same goal as our nursing staff — to provide the best care for our patients,” Fulton said. “We will continue to bargain in good faith, negotiate and have in-depth discussions. We are committed to collaborating on a flexible staffing model that prioritizes our patients’ needs, utilizes the knowledge and insight of our nurses and nurse leaders, and allows us to be responsive to the diverse and fluctuating needs of our patients and staff as the only acute care hospital serving three islands.”

High costs of living and short-staffing are driving health care workers across the state to demand better conditions. Kapi‘olani nurses finally ratified a contract last month after more than a year of negotiations, two strikes and an 18-day lockout that included multiple arrests. 

Nurses at Queen’s Medical Center, the state’s most critical health care facility, picketed in July and held a march in September to call attention to staffing issues. 

“We’re only human beings, right? We can only be in so many places at once,” Castro said. “At what point is it not safe for us to keep doing this?”