Message from NVPU President Liz Hughston

VCA’s anti-union consultants may have told you that the employees at the practices that have voted to unionize have lost their pet benefits.  As with most of what these people will tell you, that is a lie.  No benefits have been taken away from any of the employees of the hospitals that have voted to unionize.  Another lie is that the employees at the VCA unionized practices on the west coast are “on strike”.  No one has gone on strike, and there are no plans for anyone to go on strike.  You may have seen pictures of employees with signs, marching in front of VCA practices – these were informational pickets, not strikes.  These happened on specific days, for limited periods of time (max of one hour), with employees who were either off the clock or on their breaks.  Patient care was not impacted and management was fully aware of the purpose of these actions.

VCA’s consultants – who are paid bonuses if the practices they infiltrate vote AGAINST the union – may also have told you that the west coast unionized practices “aren’t doing well” or are “falling apart”.  Again, nothing could be further from the truth.  These practices are busier than they have ever been and could be making more money than ever.  However, VCA is strangling these practices by refusing to recruit support staff, or replace specialist DVMs who have left; they have chosen to close entire specialty departments, instead of replacing DVMs.  This has resulted in a severe loss of care for clients and pets in the areas of these practices.  They have chosen to close their emergency service in San Francisco – overloading the SF SPCA with emergency cases and subjecting their clients and patients to long waits and long drives for care.

In the meantime, VCA has given raises to employees in a few practices in a few regions.  They claim these raises are a recognition of the hard work these employees have been doing during the pandemic – if that’s the case, why didn’t EVERY practice receive the same increase for their staff?  They have no good reason for how they chose one practice over another in the same region to receive these raises.  But they DID point out that any practice with a bargaining unit in place (aka a unionized practice) would NOT receive these increases.  The anti-union consultants will tell you that the union won’t allow raises to be given during contract negotiations – this is absolutely false.  If the company can present the union with a fair justification for a wage increase, there is no way the union would oppose it.

VCA doesn’t care about their clients, their employees, or their patients.  They only care about the bottom line.