This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA.
Last year, Highland Hospital hired a temporary manager to fill the vacant leadership role in the ICU. Nurses on the unit immediately found the new manager to be an incompetent bully, who flaunted his many years of experience but had no clinical or management skills to show for it.
As nurses shared their stories with each other, they found the manager’s behavior to be consistently threatening, racist, and sexist, in addition to directly violating the terms of their union contract.
The nurses banded together to file an unfair labor practice with the union, and opened a formal investigation with HR. They circulated a petition around the unit demanding the manager’s immediate termination, and presented it at the Board of Trustees meeting in June. The board could not defend the manager’s inappropriate behavior and fired him on the spot!
Now, with the manager position still vacant, the nurses report that the ICU runs smoother than ever. The hospital runs just fine without management but let them try to run just one day without nurses!
Click here to read the article printed in the 07-16-24 Healthcare Newsletter
