Election over, work begins

The Austin Chronicle
BY AUSTIN SANDERS
FRI., JUNE 23, 2023

Employees with San Marcos Hays County Emergency Medical Services have unionized following a successful election with the National Labor Relations Board. What one organizer predicted would be an "inevitable" result proved true, with 68% of eligible employees voting to unionize when ballots were counted, June 2.

"The campaign seemed like an unnecessarily protracted battle," Tomás Maia, one of the SMHCEMS employees who helped organize the union campaign, told the Chronicle after the result was certified. "But, it was inevitable. We won with a clear majority and in a [vote-by-mail] election there were some obstacles like people who didn't get a ballot."

Now, organizers will work to shore up official membership in the union, especially among the roughly 30% of workers eligible for membership who voted against unionization. While doing that, organizers will begin conducting bargaining surveys among members to determine top priorities union leadership should target when bargaining with agency management over a labor contract begins later this year.

Until a contract is in place, Maia emphasized, no union dues will be collected. For now, organizers are focusing on outreach. There was some hesitancy about forming the union when the campaign began in December, Maia told us, so members of the organizing committee are laser-focused on soliciting feedback from as many union members as possible. "Everyone celebrated when we won the vote," Maia said. "But there are more mountains to climb and rivers to cross, because there's no point in having our union recognized if we can't negotiate a contract that benefits our entire workforce."

SMHCEMS Chief Executive Director David Smith, who has led the nonprofit EMS organization for eight years and who has a collective 30 years of experience in fire and EMS service, told us he's eager to get to work with the union on improving the agency for employees and patients. "I was all for employees having their voice," Smith told us. "As an organization, we always want our employees' buy-in and the size we are at now, it can be hard to find consensus." The agency serves about half of Hays County, Smith said, with ambulances running calls in Dripping Springs to the north and in San Marcos to the south, so engaging all employees can be a challenge.

But through the union, employees will have "collective representation" to ensure their voices are heard, he said, which will enhance communications between employees, agency management, and the board of trustees that governs the nonprofit agency. Smith's positive remarks about the union may come as a surprise to union organizers, though, who had been frustrated by management's refusal to voluntarily recognize the union, which would have prevented the "unnecessarily protracted" campaign Maia referenced.

"The goal of the board was to make sure all employees had a fair chance to have their opinion heard," Smith said about the decision to force an election rather than voluntarily recognize the union. "We had to protect all employees, including those that were against [unionization]." The chief offered a similar justification for the board hiring union-busting attorney Ted Smith (who worked at the firm hired by Apple and Starbucks to bust union campaigns at each company, but now works for the law firm Cornell Smith Mierl Brutocao Burton). The board didn't have a lot of experience with union campaigns, Smith said, and "we wanted to make sure everything was handled by the NLRB appropriately."

But Maia and fellow organizers hope the three stakeholder groups can put the campaign behind them and focus on the future. "Everyone basically wants the same thing," Maia said. "A professional, well-trained, stable EMS agency providing good care to residents of the county. Now that we're a recognized union, we can leverage the power that comes with a union to achieve that goal we all share."