A local union has filed charges with the National Labor
Relations Board against officials at Chamberlain’s Children Center
for violating federal labor laws.
A local union has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against officials at Chamberlain’s Children Center for violating federal labor laws.
The charges stem from allegations that officials with the center intimidated and eventually fired two employees for complaining about what they saw as dangerous and substandard conditions, and for talking to other employees about forming a union. If proven, the allegations would be considered a violation of federal and state labor laws.
“There is an atmosphere of fear and intimidation there (at the children’s center),” said Sergio Sanchez, an organizing director with the Service Employees International Union Local 817 in Hollister.
Dorean Crumine, director of Chamberlain’s Children Center, declined to comment on the charges under review by the NLRB. “I don’t have a comment on that,” she said.
Sanchez said administrators at the children’s center, which cares for abused and emotionally scarred youths, use a sense of fear to keep employees in line and to prevent them from pushing for improvements at the facility.
“People there are very fearful for their jobs,” Sanchez said.
Recently, Chamberlain’s employees Gia Soares and Ismael Duenas decided they had put up with enough and started looking into the possibility of forming a union to improve working conditions and get decent medical benefits.
“The medical benefits are a joke,” Soares said.
She said the medical plan requires workers to pay 100 percent of the costs up front and then wait for the insurance company to reimburse them 20 percent of the cost.
“The staff there was getting sick and couldn’t afford to go to the doctor,” Soares said.
Shortly after she and Duenas started speaking up about conditions at the center and talking about unionizing, they were fired on the basis of some “flimsy excuses,” Sanchez said.
“Neither of them had any previous complaints of misconduct from the center,” he said.
Duenas said he was fired simply for talking to other employees.
“They said that I was harassing other employees because I was calling them at home, after work hours, to talk about a union,” Duenas said.
Along with the charges filed with the NLRB, SEIU representatives said they will go before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to ask the county to start an investigation because the county is the largest agency contracting with the center for its services.
“We’re going to ask the Board to investigate the staff working conditions and safety at the facility,” Sanchez said.
He is also asking the county to investigate the center’s expenditure of funds from its contract with the county.
“They said that they do not have the money to pay their employees, but they had the money to go out and hire a high-priced, union-busting law firm,” Sanchez said, adding that that also could be against the law.
“The law prohibits an agency or contractor that receives more than $10,000 in public funds to use that money for union-busting,” Sanchez said.
SEIU officials said they are going to push for reforms at the center regardless of whether the employees decide to unionize.
“We’re committed to helping improve Chamberlain’s for the children there,” Sanchez said.
One of the major complaints employees had was about safety, stemming from what they believe was Chamberlain’s taking in youths who were too violent for the center to handle.
“One of them had people so terrified that he had three of the staff and some children hiding in a closet,” Soares said.
When she tried to calm the youth down and return him to his room, Soares said, he struck her across the face with a metal chair.
“In another incident, a youth struck me in the face with a bicycle helmet,” she said. “They take the attitude that if you get hurt, it’s your own fault.”
