Trinity Health Michigan confirms firing of 11 employees for leaving work

MLive file photo of a Trinity Health medical facility.

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ANN ARBOR, MI -- One of Michigan’s largest hospital systems is at odds with a labor union after 11 employees were fired from three outpatient labs in Ann Arbor and Canton.

Trinity Health Michigan’s President and CEO Rob Casalou has confirmed employees were fired for voluntarily abandoning patient care without prior notice or permission on Thursday, March 9. Investigations and terminations began during the week of March 13.

A Trinity Michigan Health statement on Friday, March 17 said these employees “put patient safety at risk” and “at one location, employees exited the back door, leaving patients in the waiting room.”

“To abandon patients is egregious, and it’s immediate end of employment if you (do),” Casalou said.

However, representatives of Service Employees International Union Healthcare Michigan, representing these Trinity employees in filing federal unfair labor practice charges, claims the employees were let go after advocating for safer working conditions and for their support of a manager they say was forced to resign.

The employees followed “normal procedures” to take the day off on March 9, union officials said in a statement.

“We have been expressing our safety concerns for several months -- not only ours as employees, but patient safety as well,” said Tiffany Hammoud, a six-year employee with the healthcare system. She was a patient service representative until she became one of the fired employees.

“We have been working critically short-staffed (and) we have brought this to the attention of Trinity numerous times and there has been no action.”

Hammoud said she and other employees have a software program they check into weekly where they list their concerns for safety. But nothing has been done thus far, she said.

The main reason employees left their shift on March 9 was because of their manager’s resignation, an SEIU spokesperson said. The union claims the manager was ordered to go through employees’ personal belongings in search of items that support the union, and was forced to resign when she refused to do so.

Casalou refutes those claims, stating Trinity Health Michigan did not ask the supervisor to search belongings and did not force her to resign.

This supervisor often advocated for safer workplace practices, Hammoud said. When employees learned of her resignation she said it “wouldn’t have been safe to continue to perform (their) jobs with that mental anguish.”

Hammoud said she was turned away from work when she came back the next day.

“We already work in a very chaotic environment that is very mentally taxing, emotionally taxing and then you get word of something so devastating. I mean, this is the only person that goes to bat for us and has our best interest at heart,” she said.

Trinity Health Michigan has denounced what it calls the “baseless and libelous claims” made by the union.

“It appears the SEIU manipulated our employees into abandoning their patients as part of some stunt to exaggerate the union’s political influence. In the process, they endangered the patients who entrusted us with their care,” Casalou said in a statement.

A union spokesperson said the group never told workers to walk out that day.

As for the claims of workplace safety concerns, Trinity Health Michigan officials said in a statement that “there is no record of lab colleagues reporting any workplace safety concerns on March 9 to lab directors, nor escalating any such concerns to upline leaders.”

The statement adds that “any prior reported safety concerns brought to leadership were investigated and immediately addressed.”

Trinity Health Michigan immediately had to deploy other staff members to the impacted sites as it dealt with investigating the situation, Casalou said.

As a result, three other lab locations had to temporarily shut down in Ypsilanti, Milan and Ann Arbor. Trinity Health’s Arbor Park lab in Ypsilanti is currently still closed.

SEIU has filed federal unfair labor practice charges against Trinity Health Michigan on behalf of the fired employees, a union spokesperson confirmed.

Casalou said the company is not aware of any formal complaint at this time.

“If we actually do receive any notifications, we will vigorously defend them,” he said.

When it comes to reinstating jobs, Casalou said he does not see that as a possibility at this time.

“If there’s something that we didn’t know, then I’m always going to be willing to listen, but, right now, they did abandon their patients and this is the decision we’ve made,” he said.

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