‘Health Care for Health Care Workers’: Hundreds Stage 2-Day Strike at Daly City Hospital

Hundreds of workers at AHMC Seton Medical Center in Daly City walked off the job on Monday as part of a two-day strike to demand the hospital reverse changes it recently made to their health care plans.

“We’re striking for better medical benefits, something that actually covers our families, that pays the bills,” said Christina Caridis, an X-ray technician, who was among the throng of hospital staff on the picket line hoisting signs that said “Health Care for Health Care Workers.”

“We all have outstanding bills; we’ve gone to collections, and these are bills that they (the hospital) were supposed to pay,” she said.

The union representing the workers said the hospital’s administration dramatically changed health care options at the beginning of the year after workers’ previous contract expired, forcing them to pay up to $6,000 a year to maintain their coverage or accept a new plan with limited access to local doctors and hospitals.

“I’m worried about my family, my kids not having basic insurance that works,” said Juliya Vinogradsky, a respiratory therapist at Seton, noting that the new, more affordable plan has very few options for local care. “The closest doctors are about 45 minutes to an hour’s drive.”

The two-day strike, expected to continue through Tuesday, follows a number of previous labor disputes at the facility since 2020 when AHMC Healthcare purchased the hospital out of bankruptcy. Since then, the Los Angeles-based company has “gutted patient care services and initiated several rounds of layoffs, cutting non-nurse staffing by nearly 25%,” according to the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents more than 400 Seton workers, including nursing assistants, licensed vocational nurses, respiratory therapists, housekeepers and medical technicians.

The union is still negotiating a new contract with the company and said that while it’s “near agreement” on wages, it won’t consider any deal that doesn’t fully restore workers’ health benefits.

“I am mainly here for better health care. This health insurance affects my 6-month-old daughter,” said Rachelle Ortua, a material management technician at Seton, who joined the picket line on Monday. “I’m not even worried about myself. I’m only worried about my daughter.”

Ortua said she and her daughter now have to drive at least 45 minutes to see a pediatrician who is covered by her new insurance plan. And the closest hospital with emergency pediatric care, she said, is even further away.

“I have chronic asthma, and I’m afraid my daughter has it,” Ortua said. “If she has it and she needs to get admitted, you’re telling me that [with] this health care, I have to travel an hour and a half away for her to be admitted into the hospital? I’m not OK with that.”

The union also said it fears that AHMC plans to further drain resources and eventually shutter the safety-net hospital that has primarily served lower-income immigrant communities in northern San Mateo County and San Francisco for generations. When it purchased the hospital in August 2020, the company, in an agreement with the state, committed to keeping it open for at least five and a half years — roughly midway through 2026.

But Seton’s administrator said concerns about its commitment to the well-being of its workers and patients are unfounded, calling the strike “unnecessary.” It accused the union of prioritizing “a contract negotiating tactic over patient and community care.”

The hospital has offered workers “outstanding wages and extraordinary medical benefits,” including 16% pay increases over three years, the option of free medical benefits for employees and their families, and a generous paid time off package, Seton said in a statement on Monday.

Since purchasing Seton in August 2020, when the facility “teetered on the edge of closure,” AMHC has pledged to keep the hospital open and make it financially viable by investing $100 million in repairs and upgrades and undertaking a $75 million seismic retrofit, the statement said.

“We have been working diligently to ensure Northern San Mateo County has a community hospital for years to come,” Sarkis Vartanian, the hospital’s head administrator, said in the statement. “My focus has been to provide high-quality, affordable care that meets the needs of our community.”

But many workers and local officials said the current state of the hospital suggests otherwise.

“They’re supposed to get new equipment and they didn’t get new equipment,” said Daly City Councilmember Pamela DiGiovanni, who joined workers on the picket line on Monday. “One of the doctors told me the bulbs are out in some of the operating rooms. It’s just terrible.”

DiGiovanni said she’s been calling Vartanian about these issues “three times a day, and he has not called me back.”

The hospital operators have failed to “fix and repair equipment that we need and provide the resources that we need to treat our patients,” Caridis, the X-ray technician, added. “In my personal specialty, I have no equipment to do the procedures that I need to do on a safe basis. We cancel a lot of patients.”

Workers like Ortua, the material management technician, acknowledged that the hospital is a business with financial constraints but said penalizing its workers and patients is both unethical and foolhardy.

“I understand trying to save money but treating your employees this way, you’ll never save money that way,” she said. “You’re going to lose people and end up losing the hospital. The least you can do is provide us with proper health care.”

KQED’s Sydney Johnson and Matthew Green contributed reporting to this story.