Dec 22, 2007  
Why They Do the Things They Do
 
What is lacking, for the most part, by our Enloe administration is this positive attitude toward its employees. The administration shows very little faith or trust in its employees. It looks upon us not as brethren – and definitely not as equals – but as greedy adversaries.

Have you ever wondered why things just don't seem to get any better, or if they do, they just seem – after a little while – to slip backward? Or more specifically, that as obvious as problems at Enloe and their solutions are, we seem to never "get there."

A little tangent...
Please allow me to go off on a little tangent that may not at first appear relevant to our situation here at Enloe....

As a race, we humans have done all right for ourselves for the majority of our time on this planet. We survived. Of course, now we are killing the planet – and ourselves – with our technology and our self-centered concern to take care of only "me and mine." Why?

I'm no expert in genetic programming, but from what I can see, we are genetically programmed to be fickle.

Our natural instinct to self preservation, as necessary as it was to insure our race's survival, has now become an encumbrance. We have reached a point in our evolution where we must enlarge the scope of our preservation to include the whole planet.

There is hope, I hope. The human race has had a fair share of folks who have tried to point us all in the right direction. For example George W. Bush's favorite philosopher, Jesus; and then there's Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Gautama (Buddha), Lao Tsu, and so on, and so on. I mention these good folks, because they knew that self-centeredness could lead to problems. They all taught something about the utmost importance of getting along with each other – our neighbors, our enemies...our employees.

Self preservation is carried out mostly through fear. Fear of dying. We all have it. It is genetically programmed into each of us. We cannot, under normal circumstances, get rid of it. It makes us afraid of the extreme, and cautious of the different. It tends to make us conservative; it tends to be negative. When it becomes a blind compulsion, it can end up – ironically – hurting us, our children...our employees.

Getting along with each other is carried out mostly through faith, hope and charity – as those great philosophers taught. This tri-cornered 'creed' is also part of our genetic makeup. A parent – again, under normal circumstances – cannot successfully bring up his or her children without it. It's tendency is positive. A good dose of this creed is not only good for our children, it is also good for...yes, that's right...our employees.

A balance of the two attitudes is healthiest. Unfortunately, the 'negative' attitude of fear is the stronger being the more primary. The more positive attitude – for most of us – is acquired through experience and awareness.

Meanwhile, back at Enloe...
What is lacking, for the most part, by our Enloe administration is this positive attitude toward its employees. The administration shows very little faith or trust in its employees. It looks upon us not as brethren – and definitely not as equals – but as greedy adversaries.

Our administration is afraid of sharing power.
One would think that administrators would know better how to run an institution. In general this may be so. But after the poor decisions made by Phil Wolfe, Dan Neumeister and Beth O'Brien, one is forced to rethink this 'obvious' notion. Besides, this blind faith in bosses flies in the face of the fulfillment of the noble idea of democracy. Democracy is based on a trust in the decision-making ability of the rank and file, and a distrust of putting too much power into the hands of an elitist group.

Our past elitist administrators have put our needed expansion in the wrong location, have laid off a respected anesthesiologist group, have laid off almost 200 hard-working employees, and have foolishly spent millions of our hospital dollars fighting the interests of its employees and their unions and organizations.

We employees are not asking for all the power, or even a large amount of it. We are simply asking that the administration respects our experience in the world of patient care, and takes our input seriously. We don't want the bogus lip service of our previous administrations' "employee forums," "employee surveys" and "teamwork for success." We want our ideas to be seriously considered, and if found practical, to be seriously implemented.

These are the very reasons, we're told, that Enloe's present CEO, Debi Yancer, left nursing and entered management – her frustrations with an immovable administration. A person as committed to patient care, as Ms. Yancer says she is, should not have to leave nursing to get her ideas taken seriously. Administrations should trust these dedicated healthcare givers and work with them.

Our union has proposed an employee/management committee that would resolve many of our hospital's problems. This proposal offered a neutral, third-party to make binding decisions whenever employees and management reached an impasse. Our administration rejected our proposal, because they wanted unilateral power in decision making; because they did not trust their employees.

Our administration is afraid of sharing wealth.
Common thought would have it that administrators deserve a lot more money than their employees.

You tell me who works harder, and whose work is more relevant to patient care outcome: a doctor? a nurse? a surgery tech? a nurse assistant? an administrator? Now, rank their salaries. Chief administrators usually make more money than doctors!!! We're not saying administrators should not make a decent living, but excess is excess! Besides, a nurse assistant who, in general, works much harder – and is more relevant – than an administrator, quite often cannot make ends meet and fearfully watches her or his family scrape by.

It's sickening the amount of money that has been wasted by our previous administrations on their bad decisions. Our past chief administrators have acted as if the hospital's money was theirs for the taking, as if Enloe was a for-profit institution. Some of them have received yearly raises of over 40%, all the while asking their employees to be satisfied with their so-called market surveys that might, or might not, give them a simple cost of living raise. Now they blame the employees' union for their decision not to give the market survey raise to any service unit employee!

Let's not forget our elitist Board of Trustees, who have given those unbelievable raises – and even more unbelievable severance packages – to those very same incompetant administrators.

We employees are not asking to be made rich, even though many of us work harder than some administrators. We are only asking for the same kind of wages and benefits that hospital workers receive in Red Bluff and in Redding, places where the cost of living is probably less than here in Chico.

The problems at Enloe, and their solutions, are obvious. Why do we seem never to "get there"?

JN