In the 1960s and '70s, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange picketed with farmworkers and marched with Cesar Chavez, even serving jail time for the cause. In the 1980s, the Catholic nuns rallied behind janitors trying to unionize.
Long known as friends to labor, today the sisters are on the other side of the picket line, locked in a clash with a union that wants to organize at a chain of hospitals the nuns operate throughout California.
Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers-West is seeking to unionize more than 8,000 caregivers, including cafeteria workers and X-ray technicians, at five St. Joseph Health System hospitals -- three in Orange County and two in Northern California. The union has alleged a variety of anti-union tactics, which the nuns have denied.
The dispute has clergy and labor leaders confronting the sisters on what they say is a disconnect between the order's legacy of worker advocacy and the way it has dealt with unions at its nonprofit hospitals. The order, after all, was named for the biblical carpenter and patron saint of workers.
"They've always been on the right side of social justice," said Judith Remy Leder, a retired teacher and former sister who left the order in 1975 after 15 years. "I just see this as a blind spot."
While other groups of workers, such as nurses, have successfully unionized at St. Joseph hospitals, service workers first began to organize at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in 2004. The dispute has heated up at other hospitals in the last two years, with federal labor complaints and newspaper ads on both sides centered on whether the sisters have been faithful to Catholic teachings.
The union's dispute with St. Joseph came to a head this summer at the sisters' brick convent in Orange known as the Motherhouse. Last month during the sisters' annual retreat there, the convent was the target of seven days of vigils and rallies by hospital workers, priests, former sisters, local politicians and labor leaders.
The union said the sisters have used union-busting tactics they once crusaded against: holding mandatory meetings advising workers against unionizing, barring union officials from distributing leaflets, intimidating labor organizers with photographers and security guards, and hiring anti-union consultants.
The union wants St. Joseph to agree on ground rules before hospital workers hold a union election. Without an agreement stressing neutrality, union officials said, hospital managers would try to delay and discourage workers from voting for the union.
