Week Adjourned: 8.27.10

Cookie-cutter Nurse, circa 1945 Top Class Actions

Care Doesn’t Discriminate? You would think that healthcare might be the one environment in which race would not be the priority. Not so, apparently. One of San Francisco’s biggest hospitals, Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), which also operates St. Luke’s Hospital, is facing a class action over allegations that it is engaged in systematic discrimination against the hiring of Filipino registered nurses. The suit, brought by the California Nurses Association (CNA), alleges contract violations in a systematic policy of discrimination.

The CNA held a press conference over the matter during which former nursing supervisors and nurses of CPMC spoke out about the discrimination they themselves had faced. The CNA have also made public data from a review they conducted which show that in early 2008 there was a major demographic shift among the nurses being hired at St Luke’s. “Before February 2008, 65% of St Luke’s RNs were Filipino. After February 2008, only 10% of RNs hired were Filipino,” the press releases states.

“St. Luke’s and CPMC RNs, many of them Filipino, have been outspoken in defense of their patients, and in opposition to Sutter and CPMC’s plans to reduce services to the largely lower income, minority community depending on St. Luke’s from SOMA to the Excelsior,” said CNA Co-president Zenei Cortez, RN.

“Rather than respond to the concerns of the community, CPMC and Sutter have chosen instead to retaliate by carrying out a punitive, illegal, and immoral campaign of discrimination,” said Continue reading “Week Adjourned: 8.27.10”