Public Employee Press

Grievances get $1,000 raises and back pay for 19 at Harlem Hospital

When a grievance made Harlem Hospital pay Clerical Associate III Roselene Dolce the contractual salary differential for working in the Emergency Room, 18 more Local 1549 members followed her example with a group grievance. They each received a $1,000 pay increase plus retroactive amounts that averaged $500.

"In the ER, you're faced with a high stress level," said Clerical-Administrative Division Grievance Rep Eugene Williams Jr., who pressed the members' grievances.

Harlem Hospital is a great community institution - a Level 1 Trauma Center that cares for people with a wide range of lifethreatening injuries - but its Generations/Northern Manhattan Health Network is notorious for not paying the clerical workers their assignment differentials.

"This victory puts the hospital on notice that they cannot take away something from the least-paid employees without a fight from their union," said Williams, who consulted with Dolce after winning a similar case at Lincoln Hospital.

"It was nice to learn that we were supposed to get the differential for working in the ER because of the nature of the work," Dolce said. "It's in black and white in our contract."

CA III Cherelle Sample was ecstatic about the victory: "I appreciate what the union did for us," she said. "I've been working at this hospital since 2001, and the union is really here for us."

Assistant Clerical Division Director Renee Gainer said the assignment differential should be routine. "ER Clerks should get it upon assignment. The union rep did a great job by filing the grievances to make the hospital pay what the members are entitled to."