County Supervisors OK Massive Cut in Benefits for Unionized Physicians

Two years after becoming the largest group of doctors to unionize in decades, physicians who work for Los Angeles County face a massive cut in their benefits.

Under a package approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, the doctors will lose the popular “megaflex” benefits, in which workers receive a cash bonus they can pocket, use to buy their benefits or boost their pensions.

Union officials allege that the supervisors, who have clashed often with labor in the last year, are trying to break the union. County officials acknowledge the reason for the benefit cut is that megaflex benefits have historically been available only to nonunion county employees.

Although the doctors’ union successfully contested the move in arbitration, the proceeding was not binding and the county will impose the cut anyway, effective Jan. 1, under the board’s move Tuesday.

Physicians union officials vow a legal fight and insist that the cut is part of a broader effort to kill the union. Decertification petitions are reportedly being circulated at county hospitals and clinics by doctors who want to leave the union.

“They don’t want the physicians to be unionized,” said Joe Bader, director of the Los Angeles office of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, which represents about 800 county doctors. “They don’t want the physicians to be strong advocates, not only for their own employment conditions, but for improvements in patient care.”

Supervisors said the doctors knew they risked losing their benefits if they unionized, because megaflex is available only to nonunionized employees.

“The doctors, they knew full well what they were getting into,” Supervisor Don Knabe said. “This is no surprise.”

As Knabe indicated, during the 1999 unionization drive, the doctors were warned that they could lose the lucrative benefits package if they organized.

“It was made clear by the county of L.A. . . . that we have one plan for represented [employees] and one plan for non-represented,” Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said. “If they didn’t disclose that to their members, then they certainly made some misrepresentation.”

Union officials allege that taking away the megaflex package--which they calculate is worth $19,000 or more to some senior doctors--constitutes illegal retaliation for unionizing. Under the new contract approved by the board, megaflex would be replaced with a standard benefits package.

Dr. Simon K. Mintz, a 34-year county veteran who works as a surgeon at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, says the cut is a slap in the face. “Now that we’ve unionized, after all these years, the county has cheated us,” said Mintz. The union says Mintz would lose $16,000 annually under the proposal.

Other than a lawsuit, the union has other challenges to the contract in the works. It is pushing a bill in the Legislature that would require the issue to go to binding arbitration, and it has a complaint pending before the county’s Employee Relations Commission. Bader, the union director, also has vowed to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

This is not the first labor tussle for the county board, despite the traditional alliances between its Democratic majority and local unions.

Supervisors Burke, Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky have infuriated their allies in organized labor over the last year by clashing with county unions over pay raises--a dispute that led to a brief strike last year--as well as fighting other unions during last year’s transit strike.

Burke and Yaroslavsky joined their two conservative colleagues--Knabe and Supervisor Mike Antonovich--in approving the doctors’ contract Tuesday. Molina was not present. Yaroslavsky declined to comment, citing the union’s threat of litigation.

Joining the doctors at a rally before the board meeting was the union representing 20,000 other county health workers who were protesting supervisors’ cuts earlier this summer of 450 vacant positions in the health department, including slots for 100 nurses.

The trims were made in response to a looming deficit in the health department, which is losing much of its federal funding and must close an $884-million gap in four years.

But members of the Service Employees International Union, Local 660 said supervisors were being short-sighted in cutting rather than searching for more money.

Citing supervisors’ efforts to beef up nurse recruitment following reports in The Times of delays in medical care at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, Local 660 General Manager Annelle Grajeda said: “The board has acted to address the symptoms of the crisis while simultaneously taking steps to worsen the disease.”