Sutter Health is the only major hospital chain in Northern California that refuses to adopt system-wide patient care and labor standards.
Every other major health system in California - Catholic Healthcare West, Kaiser Permanente, Tenet Healthcare and HCA - has agreed to set workplace standards designed to improve patient care and retain qualified medical staff in their facilities. Furthermore, all of these companies have pledged not to interfere with employees' freedom to make decisions about joining unions. Sutter Health has refused to adopt similar system-wide standards.
Sutter Health has spent hundreds of thousands of patient-care dollars to hire anti-union consultants when employees seek to join a union. Sutter's anti-union tactics include holding one-on-one meetings with employees to discourage them from joining a union and distributing anti-union literature, often containing false information. In recent years, Sutter also fired home health workers trying to form a union in San Francisco and illegally locked employees out of work after conducting a one-day strike in response to the hospital's unfair labor practices.