Attorney David Rome Wins Unusual 3-Party Arbitration Against Boston Medical Center

In an unusual tri-partite (3 party) arbitration, Arbitrator Lawrence Holden has ruled that Boston Medical Center (BMC) violated its agreement with 1199SEIU (Union) when it failed to post vacancies for 1199-represented RNs which arose when it shifted work from the East Newton campus, the part of its facility represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), to the Harrison Avenue Campus, the location represented by 1199. BMC had denied a Union grievance protesting the failure to post, claiming that it had the management right to shift the work from one campus to the other and to move all of the employees along with the unit. Prior to the first day of the arbitration, the MNA insisted on joining the proceeding because of a concern that a ruling might affect its rights, and both BMC and the Union agreed to a single proceeding involving all three parties. The language of both the BMC/Union and BMC/MNA contracts were similar. Following 3 days of hearing, the Arbitrator concluded that BMC had violated its promise to the Union. He pointed to two primary reasons: (1) when work had moved from one campus to the other on several occasions in the past over the prior 15 years, neither the Union nor the MNA had grieved the Hospital’s decision to first post the jobs for RNs on the receiving campus and its failure to offer the positions first to the nurses whose jobs were affected; and (2) the language of the contracts dealing with relocation of units gave the Employer the discretion to decide whether to offer a transfer, but did not allow the affected RN to insist on transferring with the unit. This lent support to the Union’s position that BMC’s first obligation was to honor its promise to the Union to post all vacancies and only then offer transfers to RNs if unfilled positions remained.