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California nurses call for investigation of alleged discriminatory hiring practices against Filipinos at SF’s St.Luke’s hospital
If you don’t think racism and discrimination still exists in our era of diversity, consider this: A de facto ban against hiring Filipino nurses at the St.Luke’s Campus of Sutter Health’s Calif. Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) appears to be policy in San Francisco.
No Filipinos, as blatant as that.
Just like the old sign that the Filipino National Historical Society displays, the one from the 1920s that reads, “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.”
You can take that sign and stick it on the door at St.Luke’s, right now, says the California Nurses Association, the nurses union.
And now it wants to do something about it.
At a press conference on Thursday, the union will call for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to investigate the hospital. The union will also announce its intention to file a class action grievance against Sutter and CPMC.
The union provided compelling evidence which included signed statements by former managers and current job stats, that suggests Filipinos are being unfairly discriminated at the St. Luke’s campus.
From numbers provided by CPMC, the numbers are revealing. Before the take-over of the hospital in 2007 the Filipino RNs at St.Luke’s were 66 percent of the nursing population.
Between 2007 and 2008, just 48 percent of new hires were Filipino.
From Feb. 2008, when the nurses union and the community organized to stop the closure of St.Luke’s, to the present, the percentage of new RN hires who were Filipino dropped dramatically to just 10 percent.
They didn’t all just give up their RN credentials and take jobs as Wal-Mart greeters.
Nato Green, the labor representative who works at St.Luke’s said it’s no coincidence. “I believe this reflects Sutter’s decision to use race to divide workers and stop collective bargaining activity,” Green told me. “ Going from 66 percent to 10 percent (of new hires) is a fairly remarkable coincidence.”
It all comes after the union forced Sutter to keep St.Luke’s open. The nurses union expected some push back, but not this.
“CPMC and Sutter have chosen to retaliate by carrying out a punitive, illegal and immoral campaign of discrimination,” said Zenei Cortz, the California Nurses Association president. “There is no excuse for racial or ethnic discrimination. A hospital should be a center of therapeutic healing for patients, not a model for bigotry.”
The union also produced affidavits signed under penalty of perjury. Ronald Rivera, a former nurse manager, who worked there from April 2006 to April 2010 when he resigned on good terms, provided his testimony.
“One day I spoke with Diana Karner (VP of nursing) on the phone about hiring new RNs,” he attested. “Diana said to me that we probably should not hire any more foreign graduate nurses. She explained that patients complain because “it is hard to understand them and be understood by them.”
Another signed affidavit came from Ronald Villanueva, who actually was sitting in and overheard the conversation between Karner and Rivera. “I was shocked and I wondered if she knew I was a foreign graduate nurse,” he wrote.
A third declaration came from from Chris Hanks, who was the Director of Critical Care from 2008 to 2009 and reported directly to Karner. Hanks was alarmed when told point blank “you are not to hire any Filipino nurses.” Hanks challenged Karner at their weekly meetings, until he was Karner told him, “The Filipinos are always related , or know each other, and that’s not good. You’re not to hire them.”
Karner the VP of nursing didn’t return my telephone call.
Kevin McCormack, of CPMC’s media relations said she was out of the office and unavailable. What did he think of a ban on hiring Filipino nurses? “That would be illegal,” he said. “You can’t ban hiring specific groups.”
He called it “ridiculous” and implied it was a stunt by C N A to fan the ongoing labor dispute with CPMC.
“We have a long history of hiring Filipino nurses on all our campuses, including St.Luke’s, and we are still hiring them,” McCormack read from CPMC’s official statement. “We have many RNs at our St. Luke’s campus who are Filipino and know how extraordinary they are. To say we are imposing quotas on them is outrageous.”
It is outrageous, but the numbers don’t lie.
The Filipino nursing staff at St.Luke’s is shrinking and it is such a precipitous drop that it can’t just be by accident or happenstance.
Note from Emil Guillermo: Help,I’m a pioneer!
AAJA, the Asian American Journalists Association has figured out the best way to get back at me after all my years of being a bickering member.
It’s honoring me.
On Wed., Aug. 4, I’m being honored among 150 others as an Asian American pioneer in U.S. journalism. (Yes, Tritia Toyota and Connie Chung are on the list too. But so ae lots of others who were founders and original members of AAJA).
How’d that happen?
It’s just a citation for being old and one of the first Asian Americans to consider journalism instead of medicine, the law, restaurant ownership, or investment banking for a career.
At this point in time, I’d have to say, choosing journalism may not have been the best choice.
But it was my choice. And I’m gratified that someone noticed that I was the first Asian American male and first Filipino American to host a national news program when I was senior host of “All Things Considered” in 1989.
I hope that doesn’t become the headline in my obituary someday. It’s not over yet. (I can’t even withdraw from my IRA without a 10 percent penalty).
I’m still a pioneer who hasn’t quite reached the promised land.
Emil Guillermo on the coincidence of the U.S/England World Cup match and Philippine Independence Day: A good day for beating back the colonizer!
What a coincidence the U.S. tied its former colonizer at the world’s game 1-1. Or as the NYTimes’ Nick Kristoff tweeted, the U.S. “beat” England, 1-1….
Of course, the U.S. didn’t. But it’s acceptable underdog-speak. Reminiscent of the famous headline “Harvard beats Yale, 29-29,” when the improbable tie must be acknowledged with something more than an “attaboy.”
But I was with Alexi Lalas, the former MLS star, who was unwilling to be diplomatic and on the pregame on ABC forecasted a 2-1 victory.
Why not?
The U.S. can play now. It’s not like the day of Kyle Rote Jr. and the old NASL. U.S. players play with the top English clubs now. Our independence from soccer inferiority has already been declared.
So U.S. ”beats” England didn’t come to mind immediately. In fact, the U.S. was lucky the Brit keeper had Teflon mits. Good for pols, bad for goaltenders. The goal was like a gift from the soccer gods, as if some invisible foot (like Adam Smith’s hand?) nudged the ball to the net, an equalizer by providence.
But that’s it for karmic justice.
On the day the U.S. faced its colonizer, the U.S. has some other significant imperial baggage of its own.
On June 12, 1898, the Philippines proclaimed its independence from Spain after the Spanish-American War’s battle of Manila Bay.
But the proclamation wasn’t recognized by Spain or the U.S.
The Spanish took advantage of the communications lag and before the announcement had ceded the Philippines to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris 1898. The U.S. had its own imperial designs and made Philippines its first colony. That was all news to the victorious Filipinos and General Emil Aguinaldo. And with that, the U.S. -Philippine war was begun, and hundreds of thousands of lives, both American and Filipino,were lost.
So you can see how all these years later, on this day, karma could only carry the U.S. so far.
But now that we’ve tied the Brits, maybe we can all feel better about bankrupting BP and destroying the English pension system!
USA, USA, USA!!!
Emil Guillermo on how non-soccer fans can appreciate World Cup action: The blare of the vuvuzelas makes WC2010 sound like a gastric event. Enough with the tooting. I know you love futbol, but will someone take down the “Honk if you’re horny” sign so we can enjoy “the beautiful game”?
The World Cup is here again. And in the case of West Coast fans, the early bird gets the worm. This morning you got 70 minutes of boredom and about 20 minutes of great soccer. Mexico should have won by at least 3 goals (will give the poster to SA), but instead we ended up with the perfect diplomatic result.
A tie.
Who wears ties anymore?
Ties are good for the kids’ rec and travelling teams, which I used to coach. It caters to the “winning isn’t everything” school of parenting. But in the World Cup, where soccer zealotry is pumped to extreme levels, a tie is so unsatisfying. Winning is everything, dadgummit. (A soccer phrase from the Netherlands, I believe).
Still, if you’re a soccer fan, you delighted in little things like when a Mexican wing passed the ball into an empty space behind a South African defender, then outran the defender to the ball. Essentially, Aguilar the Mexican forward passed it to himself. That was like a “wow” move. Too bad his cross to the goal wasn’t converted.
But the game isn’t about scoring. It’s about the journey, and the displays of brilliant ball handling along the way.
Here’s how to watch the matches: Pray they keep the camera wide enough so you can see as much of the field as possible. The close ups are good for the sweat. But the way to appreciate the game is to look away from the ball. Don’t follow the ball, follow the empty spaces, and then look to see how the players without the ball suddenly appear to meet a pass into space.
In basketball, a good guard and a center can play pick and roll all day. In soccer, you can see series of “give and gos” all the way down field. When the passes are direct and literal you won’t see the magic. But when players exploit space and send the ball into the open to a teammate in full run, then you see the beauty and the fluidity of the game. That’s when the magic happens. Like when the South Africans scored the first goal of the cup, the ball was sent into space when Siphwe Tshabalala, #8, found it on a dead run to strike it into the net.
Text-book use of exploiting speed and space. Joe Montana to Jerry Rice on a post pattern. Same thing.
Now that’s when when you should blow those darn horns.
Emil Guillermo on the California primary vote: Does anyone have time for democracy anymore? Plus: The GOP’s Twin Towers of Estrogen
We just had an election in California, and once again, in my humble polling place, we had more poll workers than voters.
If Justin Bieber were there, then we’d have a crowd. And then the state’s future would be dictated by the tastes of 12-year olds—which might be an improvement. They know what it’s like to live on an allowance.
Still, just 23.4 percent voted in San Francisco. Los Angeles County was lower yet at 19.6. Maybe if we could jump up those numbers by allowing voting while texting AND driving the state’s numbers would go up. Voting by IPhone? There’s got to be an app for that.
Who voted the most? Little Sierra County, northeast of Sacramento, population around 4,000, had a turnout of 73.3 percent! (I’m checking if a few goats weren’t allowed to cast ballots to pad those numbers).
I imagine there’s not much to do in Sierra County but wait for an election to have an excuse to get out of the house. Does that mean those of us in slightly less rural areas have too much to do to value democracy?
We show up when it counts, of course. Like for a general election when the presidency is at stake. But all politics is local, remember. This is the stuff that hits home. And not many showed up.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
The big lesson in California is that money is still everything in politics—if you have more than $30 million. That’s roughly what Steve Poizner spent on his campaign and he didn’t win one county. So let’s revise the adage. You need almost $100 million to be victorious like Meg Whitman, the GOP’s first female standard bearer to run for governor of the state. She along with Carly Fiorina, who won the GOPs senate race, are the party’s new public face: The twin towers of estrogen. You can talk about diversity if you’d like, but Democrats have had women, gays, lesbians, Asians, Latinos, blacks for years. Why praise the GOP for something it should have embraced a long time ago?
But here’s why you should be suspicious: Anytime you hear someone say they want to run “California like a business,” run away. Fast.
That’s not what we need in this state. Arnold’s already tried and look what he’s done.
After Tuesday, the state finds itself with two failed CEOs who have used their parachute money to enter politics (remember, they’d still be CEOs if they were really successful).They now want to do something useful with their lives besides make money. They think because they ran a business, they can run a government.
As Arnold found out, it’s trickier than it looks, mostly because government isn’t about dollars and sense nor bottom lines and profits. It’s still about people and services that make up a community.
A CEO of a major corporation, whose trick to raise revenue include off-shoring, laying off older workers, and generally trimming human beings to show profit, just doesn’t have the skill set for the kind of government that fosters community. But whose to stop the vanity of Whitman and Fiorina who have the money to put their business skills to the test. You want to be the guinea pig?
Tell me how smart it is to spend nearly $100 million for a 4-year job? Where’s the fiscal responsibility in that?
PUBLIC FINANCING and MCLEOD
The only way to get good people to run is to eliminate money as a factor. And unfortunately, Prop.15, which called for a public funding experiment failed.
Money is the reason why American Filipino Rod McLeod’s run for Superior Court judge in San Francisco was notable. Spending less than $2,000, he was trying to buck the trend in an office that should be above money. His opponents , however, spent about $100,000 each.
McLeod took the high road and finished third.
It counts. But what does it mean with just a 23% turnout?
Emil Guillermo on the passing of a newspaper: Aloha Honolulu Advertiser
Posted by Amok in blog, journalism, news on June 6th, 2010
The major morning daily in the state of Hawaii died this morning after 154 years.
In 2005, I left the mainland to join the Honloulu Advertiser for a brief fling.
I didn’t realize that just as I was realizing my dream of being an “ink stained wretch” that newspapers were nosediving faster than my retro-career was ascending.
When I got there, the Advertiser boasted about hitting revenue records. After a year, cost cutting measures were already in place. Trust me, the “Tiser didn’t go broke transporting my little Toyota from the Mainland. The spending cuts should have been the tip-off.
But newspaper people, despite all the negatives you see in the news, are really professional optimists.
No need for a correction now, the paper was sold for half of what the old owners bought it for. And some of my old colleagues are scratching their heads trying to figure out where they fit in the new one paper town. The Star-Bulletin, the small paper, ate the big paper, the ‘Tiser. The new paper may have indigestion. I hope it survives.
I’ll also miss the Advertiser because it was the first paper to which I gladly silenced my voice, my byline, my perspective, to write under the masthead, which at that time sported hibiscus.
I”ve learned my lesson.
Little known fact. I used the flower in an editorial once as in “stopped to smell the hibiscus.” I thought it clever until my dutiful then-editor, the great Hawaii political analyst Jerry Burris told me “Hibiscus don’t smell. Plumeria do.” Hence, I stopped to smell the plumeria.
I would have liked to have smelled it a bit longer there. But I returned to California in 2007, happy for the experience of seeing the dark side of paradise as a journalist, but realizing that the media was changing faster than we all thought.
In my next Twitter, I’ll try to squeeze in the next Watergate.
Emil Guillermo on campaign finance: Rod McLeod’s run for SF judge a political experiment that tries to be above it all by spending practically nothing
Rod McLeod–an accomplished trial lawyer and partner at one of the world’s biggest firms–is running on Tuesday for a Superior Court judgeship in the City and County of San Francisco.
But he doesn’t want to be bought and sold like a common politician.
To McLeod, that would be unseemly.
A vote for him is a vote against the same old same old in politics where money trumps all. Isn’t that refreshing.
He felt that way when I first wrote about him. Now with days before the election he still feels confident he’s done the right thing.
“I want to put a stake in the idea you have to have money to run,” McLeod told me this week.
McLeod has been outspent in the campaign by about 100-1 so far. Compared to two of his opponents who have raised in excess of $100,000, McLeod has spent about $1,250 his own money in the race.
He’s decided to take zero campaign contributions in order to run as a truly objective and impartial individual, beholden to no one, especially those who might expect that donations come with strings attached.
“I don’t want to be the best judge money can buy,” said McLeod, a native San Franciscan and American Filipino, who went to Saint Ignatius High School, and earned his law degree at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law.
Personally, I’ve been good friends with McLeod for nearly 30 years, and I can say he never takes the easy way out. I’ve known him as a man of uncompromised principle who stands up for what he believes in—even if it could hurt him.
And it has.
At one time, McLeod was considered a rising star in local San Francisco politics after his appointment to a vacant spot on the city’s Board of Education in the ‘80s. Winning the seat outright in an open election should have been a cinch, except for his unwavering decision to keep his children in Catholic schools.
That glitch was enough to send McLeod back into the private sector to focus on his stellar legal career (he’s currently a partner at Jones and Day). Not exactly a hard fall. But definitely, it was the public’s loss. McLeod, who was in the Army for over a dozen years as a paratrooper, has always been ready to serve. But when I last saw him, the plan was for an early retirement.
So in a way, McLeod’s last minute decision to run for the position of retired Judge Wallace Douglas was a real surprise. It’s also a pay cut.
What wasn’t a surprise was McLeod’s campaign approach.
“Judges shouldn’t be for sale,” McLeod said.
San Francisco is different from other counties where races for judge can cost just a few thousand dollars.
McLeod questions his big bucks opponents? What do their thousands of dollars buy? A bit more than cardboard signs.
When politicians like Barack Obama fly in with their hand out to raise cash, donors give mightily because they believe money buys access and influence. Want to get your pet issues on the radar? Write a check, get an advocate.
What should be a donor’s expectation in a judges’ race? What equates to access to justice? We all should have access already. That’s equality, right?
But if someone gives more to a judge do you get more justice, better service? When you go before him, will the new judge quickly bang the gavel and say, “Not guilty”? (It may save in court time, but let’s hope the judge recuses himself before that happens).
Normally in hotly contested judgeship races, the victor need only promise to be tough on crime.
But Superior Court judges do civil as well as criminal cases. McLeod’s two main opponents (an assistant public defender, and an assistant D.A.), may not be as broadly experienced as McLeod, an accomplished civil litigator.
Ironically, McLeod’s experience as a downtown lawyer is hurting him. People don’t even see him as an Asian American candidate.
Race isn’t an issue here. But class is.
McLeod’s actually received backlash for being a successful trial attorney who’s running against some good, but limited, government bureaucrat lawyers. They can claim class as an issue, but they’re the ones outspending McLeod 100-fold.
When you t think of it, voting for judges in the first place is just a strange way for the public to pick a competent, fair and impartial judge. Campaign money here is really a waste.
Appointing judges on merit would make better sense. Elections tend to get away from merit, and focus on money.
If you live in San Francisco, this is a race that could send a message to other politicians brave enough to take a stand against money.
But with Meg Whitman spending millions, don’t expect change to come anytime soon. Not in big races, but maybe in the smaller district and regional races.
I asked McLeod would he spend the money if he followed conventional wisdom that believes spending money would mean victory?
“If you spent $200,000, you still wouldn’t have certainty,” McLeod said.’
Realistically, the micro-budgeted McLeod does has a chance in this race if he can finish in the top 2 and no one gets 50 percent of the vote—a real possibility for this judgeship.
And in a run-off? “I’d spend the same amount,” he said.
I wouldn’t expect any different from my old friend Rod, principled to the end.
That he can’t be bought and paid for makes him an appealing and refreshing choice as the best person for San Francisco’s Superior Court.
Emil Guillermo on Armando Galarraga’s “Perfect” game: In face of the facts, why insist on Jim Joyce’s imperfection? Bring on “Truth in Baseball”
In real life, fighting for justice is hard. You don’t get to be the Brown as in Board of Education on a lark. Or Plessy. Or Wong Kim Ark.
That’s why too often we give up the fight. Life’s too short.
What’s baseball’s excuse?
Baseball is a game. Just a game. Umpire Jim Joyce’s admission is one thing. But the video is the truth. The Tigers’ Armando Galarraga beat the runner to the bag. In view of the facts, why do the purists insist on “tradition” and the “way things always have been done”? The human way, the wrong way.
Slavery was hard for some folks to give up too. But we got over that. Innocents have died before DNA was used.
There is life, death, and then there’s baseball.
Bud Selig, go with the truth. Change the call. This isn’t like a steroids policy call. This is just what it is, an easily corrected error.
At least asterisk it as a blown call. But it will designate the turning point when truth really mattered in baseball.
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