Union submits 2,700 staffing complaints at Catholic Health to state Health Department

Communications Workers of America District 1 on Tuesday said it has reported about 2,700 staffing complaints to the Health Department on behalf of union health care workers who work at Catholic Health System’s hospitals.

The complaints, the union said, were made under the state’s clinical staffing committee law – legislation that is seen as a key to improving workplace conditions that eroded within hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our members have been grappling with understaffing for far too long,” CWA Local 1133 President Brian Magner said in a statement.

“We must address the critical staffing shortages plaguing Catholic Health System facilities,” he said. “Our efforts to work with Catholic Health System management to improve staffing at the hospitals just aren’t enough and our patients and our staff deserve better.”

The submission comes after CWA District 1 in late November submitted nearly 8,000 unresolved staffing complaints across several hospitals, including Kaleida Health’s Buffalo General Medical Center and Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital; Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Elmira; and New York-Presbyterian, a downstate provider. More than 5,300 of those complaints came at Kaleida’s hospitals.

CWA said the Health Department has started conducting unannounced visits to hospitals across the state to investigate compliance with the clinical staffing committee law. That has included, according to the union, a visit last month to Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital in Amherst and a visit in the fall to Mercy Hospital of Buffalo.

In a statement Tuesday, Catholic Health said “staff recruitment and retention has always been a priority” for the health system, with even more resources committed to those efforts since the Covid-19 pandemic. Catholic Health said it has hired more than 1,200 nurses in…