Integral Care Trustees Delay Vote to Authorize Union
The union would represent nearly 1,000 employees
By Austin Sanders, Fri., May 6, 2022
After urging from the United Workers of Integral Care and local elected officials, the board of trustees for Integral Care postponed its April 28 vote to recognize the staff union, a milestone UWIC has spent more than a year working toward at Travis County's local mental health authority.
The call for a delay came after agency executives made extensive revisions to the agreement, known as the Consultation Policy, that outlines the structure and authority of the union. Members of the UWIC organizing committee say the changes, made without their input, would completely undermine the power of the union, rendering it useless. The policy is expected to return to trustees for a vote in one month, at the board's May meeting.
Before then, representatives from the board, IC management, and UWIC will meet to discuss the revisions and hopefully steer the policy in a direction that all sides can agree serves their interests. But front-line employees speaking before the board were skeptical that management will agree to a version of the Consultation Policy that will make meaningful changes to an agency that struggles to retain its staff.
"I was excited that the compensation policy might be adopted today, before I saw the changes to it," Megan Moriarty, an intake specialist with more than four years of experience at the agency, told trustees. Moriarty said the revisions would limit the scope of issues UWIC could negotiate with management, limit the ability of the union to engage with employees by prohibiting activity at agency facilities, and "delegitimize the union" by elevating the stature of a separate Employee Advisory Council, pitched by Integral Care CEO David Evans after workers announced their union drive. "I was on the verge of leaving the agency," Moriarty said at the meeting. "I felt disrespected and like my voice has not been heard … I'm so tired and organizing is not easy. It's another job in and of itself, but I do it because it's important."
Board Chair Hal Katz characterized tension over the revisions as failures of communication between organizers and management, rather than disagreement over the value of a union. "This was not supposed to be contentious," he said. "We want healthy communication so things go smoothly and we can get on with focusing on the issues that are important to employees."
But organizers contend that whatever kind of communication breakdown has occurred, it's on Integral Care's side of the table. Following the April 18 board meeting where Evans and his management team presented their proposed revisions to the Consultation Policy, UWIC emailed Evans and Katz to outline their major concerns with the edits. "Because of how many changes were proposed, we do not feel it makes sense to go through the proposed changes line by line, but rather, we wanted to communicate the key aspects of the Board's proposal that we found objectionable," the April 20 email reads. Evans acknowledged these concerns at the meeting, but said he thought the Consultation Policy could function as a "living document," meaning that the board could adopt a version of it and then leave agency management and UWIC to negotiate the details. UWIC organizers flatly reject this approach.
Other than Katz, trustees appeared to show little knowledge or understanding of these concerns at the April 28 meeting. None asked questions relating to the issues raised by UWIC in the email or at the public comment period which opened the meeting. One trustee, Deborah Smith, suggested the board schedule a work session before the May meeting to focus on the policy, but that idea was rejected in favor of a meeting between agency management, one trustee, and UWIC. The nine-person board of trustees is appointed by the Austin City Council, Travis County Commissioners Court, and Central Health's Board of Managers, with each appointing three members. These volunteers, who meet once or twice a month, are responsible for setting policy at the largest provider of mental health care in Travis County – an agency that employs more than 950 people and has a budget of nearly $125 million annually.
"Integral Care values the voice and input of all employees," an agency spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson said that the union, the EAC, and other employee groups can work together on issues facing the agency, which is the ultimate goal of agency executives and trustees.
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