The meeting is being live streamed on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Cookcountyhhs

The only person to sign up for public testimony comes from SEIU local 73’s Diane Palmer. She starts by saying that local 73 represents the largest number of workers in the Cook County Health and Hospitals System, and serves those left behind by the private health care system.

She says it’s in both the union and the board’s best interest to work together, but unfortunately their relationship with Cook County pres Prekwinkle has disintegrated.

Local 73 members voted by 90% in December for a 12 hour day strike for PPE and pandemic pay.

The CCH administration offered a $5/hr hazard pay to the nurses, but nothing to the housekeeping staff who work side by side with nurses, being exposed to the same hazards.

Palmer calls Prekwinkle a union buster and cites the fact that instead of negotiating with the union, that she spent $1 million in court against them, threatened workers w/ disciplinary action, & held workers in criminal contempt for striking.

https://seiu73.org/2020/12/cook-county-spends-millions-on-strikebreakers/

She urges the CCH board to not stay silent and for Cook County Health Human Services to protect their workers.

Carrie Pramuk-Volk, Employment Plan Officer for Cook County Health, is going over CCH’s semi annual report. She oversees compliance with the health system’s employment plan, and related employment policies and procedures.

This first slide shows human resource metrics.
The 2nd shows staff members who have left/quit/retired from CCH. Volk mentions that most people leave due to retirement, but that there’s a low response rate for the exit survey. https://t.co/l2xY450F7E

The most responses they get in any given month are 10.
One commissioner asks if a lot of health care providers, particularly nurses, are leaving due to burnout because of the pandemic?
A: “We don’t get a significant amount of information on our surveys. We’re working on it.”

Contact tracers:
One year into the pandemic, CCH has hired 285 contact tracers. Their goal months ago was to hire 500, and they’ve only filled around 65% of that goal. https://t.co/S4pb6ZQNeX

These slides show the 304 national guard members who have been onboarded by CCH to assist with COVID vaccine distribution. 18 of the guard members are training at the McCormack Center with Chicago Police. National guard members are paid by the military, and not CCH. https://t.co/F24LR8vlkV

These slides show rates of CCH staff vaccination rates. Note in the last one that doctors are non-union employees. https://t.co/789exkOQB7

Commissioners commend each other for their efforts to hire and onboard emergency level staff during a pandemic. https://t.co/XmJjiVGV4V

We’re on to the report, compiling hiring, disciplinary, and exit data from July1-December 31st, 2020. https://t.co/L4Jnavb7Py

There were 150 disciplinary actions of the staff during this period. 13 of them had issues that needed correction. 28% of disciplinary action was due to attendance (not sure which category that falls under). How many strikers were brought up on these charges? https://t.co/IpjEykWXlp

Individuals terminated for cause, for reasons “of significance”, go on an ineligible for hire list, and cannot be rehired for 5 yrs. 4 individuals have been put on that list during this period. 14 got off the list during this time because their 5 years was up.

Many of these cases were referred to the EEO for investigation.

Many cases were dropped because the complaints were found to be a misunderstanding of policy and procedures, that showed there were no employment violations.

The three largest categories are harassment, retaliation, and discrimination.

The Commissioners have moved on to the closed session of the meeting, and that concludes my live-tweeting! Thanks for following along. Follow @CHIdocumenters and @city_bureau for more coverage of local politics. https://t.co/xdrA7ZKpH7