Health Care
Virginia Mason Medical Center‘s draconian flu-shot policy for nonunion employees has claimed its first victim. Clint Fendley, who was told to get a shot before Dec. 31 or be terminated, refused and was dismissed on Tuesday, Jan. 3, from his job in the procedural care unit. Meantime, though Virginia Mason’s contract with nurses does not allow vaccination to be a condition of employment, registered nurse Melody Bartlett agreed, “due to harassment and bullying,” she says, to get the shot but only if she was allowed to note on her consent form that she was doing so under threat of losing her job. The medical center refused. She was sent home from her shift on New Year’s Day but was told that she could return to work on Monday with her manager’s permission—if she agreed to wear a surgical mask at all times for the remainder of the flu season. On Tuesday, that was contradicted and she was told wearing a mask, too, would be unacceptable. Jamie Haight, who submitted evidence of multiple allergic reactions from previous vaccinations, was told that she would have to repeat the tests using a Virginia Mason physician. Haight, who works in the billing department in an office half a mile from any patient services, was later told that she, too, could come to work if she wore a mask. She refused, telling her supervisor that the condition was like “having to wear the scarlet letter.” Haight was sent home without pay and told that if she returned the next day without a mask or a certificate of vaccination, she would be sent home again. Virginia Mason is standing by the policy as being in the best interest of patients and staff members alike. ROGER DOWNEY
MONORAIL
The downsizing Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) has cleaned out its upscale offices in the Securities Building and squeezed into a small space in the back of its community meeting room, jettisoning or boxing up reams of documents in the closure process. Among the memorable records are the e-mails to and from then–Executive Director Joel Horn in the last few days before he resigned on July 4, 2005, following announcement of a fatally flawed $11 billion financing plan. He and others were at first in offensive mode—Horn wanted an e-mail blitz attacking the City Council‘s “misleading” comments, while Horn’s managers privately ripped the media (Robert Jamison‘s column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was “fucking bullshit,” and the reporting of KING-TV’s Robert Mak “reflected poorly” on his station, for example). But the mood turned darker as even Horn’s obedient media ally turned against him: “The Stranger is asking for my resignation,” Horn wrote on June 29. “No such luck.” Even though one co-worker assured Horn in an e-mail, “We love and admire you 11 billion percent,” a few days later, the first of seven drafts and rewrites of his resignation statement appeared. They indicate that Horn, who had kept the financing plan secret even from his own board, decided to resign on July 1 and was subsequently joined by SMP board Chair Tom Weeks; the two repeatedly rewrote a joint resignation statement first drafted on July 2 by agency consultant Roger Nyhus. Horn thought the early drafts were “too defensive,” and Weeks wanted a mention that the monorail’s contract with its bidder “is a good value for Seattle.” Nyhus told them the statement “needs to provide context and needs to be bold. Otherwise, what’s the point of your actions?” In the end, Horn and Weeks took “full responsibility for the current situation”—effectively the death of the monorail dream. RICK ANDERSON.
