David Shapiro
Medical Social Workers

by Ed Herzog

Dec. 2001

For many years, the 200-member Kaiser northern California Medical Social Workers Chapter was one in name only. That is, until medical social worker David Shapiro decided to make some changes. He was elected chapter president and, drawing upon his 20 years of experience in community and union organizing, got busy. He has provided the leadership needed to create a bona fide union chapter with bylaws, officers, an active steward system, a chapter newsletter, and benefit, wage, pension, patient care, and shop steward committees.

“Until the membership took responsibility for building the chapter, it wasn’t happening,” says Shapiro. “People were frustrated because they didn’t have a coherent way to participate. We weren’t organized and we didn’t have a strategy to work together to improve our situation.”
Kaiser medical social workers had been under stress due to staffing and overtime problems. “They had asked us to work weekends and extend our hours into the evenings, but with the same wages, same staff, and no overtime,” recalls Shapiro. “It was also difficult to acquire supplies, everything was micro-managed, and we didn’t have a realistic budget.”

Shapiro brought the chapter’s problems to the Capital Area Labor/Kaiser Partnership Committee. The committee has been in place since the labor/Kaiser partnership was established at the hospital last year. They meet to discuss programs and policies to improve labor/management relations, working conditions, and patient care. “I informed the committee that new managers in our department were being hired with no training in the partnership. We recommended they attend partnership orientation sessions and change their administrative style. The committee agreed with us.”

Since that meeting, Shapiro and other chapter members have found their views are being sought on a wide range of issues including departmental budgeting and staffing. “We’ve met with the head of care coordination to determine the number of staff to hire,” says Shapiro. “The important thing is we have a voice and are directly working with management to improve services.

“Within the U.S., the labor/Kaiser partnership is probably one of the better examples of labor management relations. I try to apply it on every level within the organization.”

The partnership demands that workers extend their expertise beyond social work. “It expands workers’ responsibility beyond their job to include things like budget and staffing. It requires a greater commitment to the institution as well as the union. But through our hard work we’ve been able to improve staffing, exert more control over scheduling, and develop alternative ways of practice that produce better results.”

In addition to improving wages, benefits and working conditions, the chapter has enhanced the standing and stature of medical social workers among the other professions and has made strides toward allying itself more closely with the other unions within the institution.
“We’ve started multi-disciplinary rounds where social workers meet directly with doctors four times a week,” adds Shapiro, “as well as developing closer relationships with discharge planners, nurses, and other workers on the floor.”

Shapiro comes from a union background. His mother was a shop steward with AFSCME District Council 7 in New York, his father a vice president of the teachers’ union. His sister was a union representative and organized social workers in Chicago. His grandfather was a union organizer and member of the ILGWU in New York. Shapiro has worked with the building trades and organized farm workers, domestic workers, and temporary workers. He also has a Ph.D. and master’s degree in social work and sociology.

“This chapter-building process and our work through the partnership has been a major victory for workers,” says Shapiro. “Each unit, regardless of whether their supervisor has gone through the training, now has some basic baseline criteria to meet and discuss problems. This is a very positive step. The same workers who believed they would get nowhere with the partnership are amazed at what you can accomplish with collective power.”