It’s noon, and Mia Brucelango just finished her third back-to-back meeting of the morning.

She and other organizers with the Service Employees International Union, Local 399, have just met at a downtown union hall to coordinate the final offensive in the push to organize workers at St. Vincent Medical Center.

After four years of skirmishing with Catholic Healthcare West the owner of St. Vincent it has come down to this. The hospital’s 325 service and maintenance workers vote whether to join the union on Sept. 26 and 27, followed by a vote of 125 technicians Oct. 3 and 4.

“The workers have waited a long time for this,” says Brucelango, as she throws her backpack in the trunk of her blue Honda for the short drive to the hospital at Third and Alvarado.

Brucelango’s job has taken her to hospitals throughout the west, from Colorado to Seattle. But this is where the union faces its real test. “The health care industry in Southern California isn’t organized,” she says. “There’s more need here.”

As she navigates through traffic, the 29-year-old organizer explains that the few weeks before an election are always the most brutal.

Difficult schedule

She and the other organizers work a schedule that has them handing out leaflets to workers at 6 a.m. and meeting with employees and other organizers until 10 most nights.

“You just get physically and mentally worn out,” says Brucelango, pulling into the visitor parking at the hospital and retrieving her backpack from the trunk.

Like most days, she’ll spend little time at the Hartford Avenue union hall. Instead, she’ll be waging her battle from the sidewalks around the hospital and the cafeteria inside. “Anywhere the public can go, we can go,” she explains.

Today, she and a fellow organizer will meet pro-union employees in the cafeteria. Brucelango is depending on them to help convince fellow employees to sign “We Are Voting Yes” petitions. The signatures will be posted for employees to see before the elections. She hopes they will convince the undecided that the union has strong support.

Brucelango strides into the cafeteria and joins Jozett Weathers, “one of our kick-butt member organizers.” Weathers, 32, is a transcription clerk at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills, but she is on loan to the union as a temporary organizer as part of an agreement with Kaiser.

“Hey Mamma,” says Brucelango.

They worked together during an unsuccessful attempt to unionize Catholic Healthcare West’s St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne a year and a half ago. CHW brought in consultants (Brucelango and Weathers describe them as union busters) to help coordinate an opposition campaign.

This time around, CHW and the union have signed an agreement that breaks down some of the barriers to unionization, but Weathers and Brucelango don’t expect the hospital to give up without a tussle.

Flo Atkins, 60, makes her way to the table and receives a customary “Hey Mamma” from Brucelango.

Atkins, a patient support technician, is a godsend for the union. She’s already signed up all the employees in her unit and has convinced several co-workers to have their photos taken to post with the petition.

For Atkins, this struggle is about pay and working conditions. After 32 years at St. Vincent, she makes about $13 an hour but says technicians with far less experience receive far better pay at other hospitals. Staffing shortages, meanwhile, are a constant irritation. “We’re short of people all the time,” she says. “Sometimes I’m doing three people’s jobs.”

Veronica Tench, another patient support tech who works in the medical surgical unit, and Shari Marshall, a cook, make their way over to Brucelango’s table.

She greets each woman and asks if they’ve collected any new signatures. Brucelango needs 15 names a day from the service and maintenance workers to meet her targets, and seven a day from the technicians. Marshall says she’s still working on a couple of people, but Tench delivers a few more names. Brucelango carefully checks the names off a master list in her binder and gives the women the names of other employees to approach. For Tench and Marshall, the pay at St. Vincent is a key motivator in their struggle.

Like Atkins, Tench makes $13 an hour after 20 years with the hospital.

Marshall, a 23-year veteran at St. Vincent, makes $9.88. Meanwhile, she is subject to being dismissed without pay any time the patient count falls too low.

Early that morning, anti-union employees were handing out vote-no literature. Anti-union posters have begun to appear in the hospital, and one of the women was approached by a manager who suggested the union “wasn’t cracked up to all it’s supposed to be.”

Asked if she’s worried about the repercussions if the effort fails, Atkins says, “I’m not looking to lose, OK. But if I do, I’m still not afraid. Anything that they throw at me, I’m not just going to fold.”

Outside the hospital, Brucelango takes a moment to talk about her job as she waits to talk to a couple of employees who are about to get off work. A native of the Philippines who has been in this country five years, Brucelango was working as an administrative assistant at another SEIU local when she came to admire the organizers.

Her bosses encouraged her to take a three-day training course on union organizing. A week later she landed a full-time organizing job with the union. That was three years ago. The hardest part of her job, she says, is losing a vote. After the unsuccessful attempt to organize workers at St. Francis and RFK, she and her organizing committee hugged and cried.

“It’s the workers like Flo and Veronica, the people who are willing to stick their necks out to have a union,” she concludes. “When I’m down, I just think about them and it motivates me to do this.”