Nurses take to the airwaves with ads about contract fight

Montefiore, Mt. Sinai and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt nurses join in solidarity radio ad

New York City, Dec.2, 2011 – Thousands of New York’s nurses from some of the city’s biggest and most profitable hospitals are angry at the lack of action from management at their institutions in contract bargaining – and are taking their case to the radio airwaves.

A new 60-second ad is set to run beginning on Monday, Dec.5 on several New York-area stations. It takes Montefiore, Mt. Sinai and St.Luke’s-Roosevelt executives to task for their lack of concern about safe staffing for their patients and affordable health care for the nurses, who are the backbone of the city’s hospitals.

The ad is voiced by Karine Raymond, a working nurse from Montefiore, and professional producer Dani Suzanne Smith.

The ad is part of a coordinated contract campaign by the state Nurses Association to win fair contracts that provide the best possible patient care, affordable health care for nurses and their families, and decent wages.

Nurses at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt have already authorized a strike if no progress halts in their talks; Montefiore and Mt. Sinai will complete strike votes this weekend.

The text of the ad follows:

“NYC is famous for its great hospitals.

But these hospitals can’t function without their thousands of registered nurses – like me, Karine Raymond from Montefiore.

Our employer refuses to increase the number of nurses at the bedside, compromising our ability to give you the care we believe you deserve.

Sadly for patients, hospital executives are acting disgracefully in talks with nurses, even those hospitals are successful and profitable.

It’s shameful that hospitals like mine want to slash our health care coverage, making quality care less affordable for front-line nurses.

But we are standing up for decent benefits for our families, just like we stand up for you, our patients.

Please support me and my co-workers as we defend patients’ rights as well as our own.

This message is brought to you by the registered nurses of Montefiore, Mt. Sinai, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and the rest of the 37,000 members of the New York State Nurses Association…Please stand with us in our fight for fairness and health care.”

Contact: Mark Genovese 518-782-9400, ext. 353

Ex-MF Global Chief’s Role In Pension Reform Plan Questioned

By Chris Bragg

As more details filter out about the collapse of MF Global – the major derivatives trading firm that crashed under a $1 billion cash shortfall last month— a New York City union leader is questioning why two of the company’s top officials are leading efforts to revamp the city’s $120 billion pension fund system.

Comptroller John Liu hired Larry Schloss, a private equity fund manager who had also been serving as one of the four directors for MF Global, in early 2010 as deputy comptroller for pensions and chief investment officer.

This September, the comptroller hired Kevin Davis, the former CEO of MF Global, to oversee the pension system’s new commodities investment program, a Liu spokesman confirmed. Davis had left the company amid a $90 million settlement stemming from a rogue trading scandal. The hiring was not announced via press release.

Much of the focus surrounding MF Global’s collapse has centered on its former CEO, ex-New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, and his risky bets in Europe. But scrutiny has also been brought on the company’s lack of internal risk and accounting controls, persistent problems stemming from the tenures of Davis and Schloss, said Greg Floyd, the president of Teamsters Local 237, who sits on the city’s biggest pension fund board.

“The fact is that Jon Corzine was the tip of the iceberg,” Floyd said. “MF Global had been having problems since Larry Schloss was there and when Davis was there. Corzine was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Three years have passed and two CEOs have come and gone since Schloss and Davis were at the company. A spokesman for Liu’s office said that for anyone to question Scholl’s qualifications for his job was “absurd.”

In a statement to City & State, Schloss dismissed any questions about Davis’ recent hiring.

“Kevin Davis has 26 years of experience in commodities and has run a global business. He was hired because he was the best applicant for the job,” Schloss said. “He will help devise a long-term strategy for the pension funds in order to further optimize the investment portfolio. You can’t overlook 26 years of experience.”

Notably, Floyd is exploring a 2013 run for mayor in a field that could include Liu, and has recently cast himself as an antagonist to the embattled comptroller.

Floyd said he was most concerned by a rogue trading incident at MF Global in February 2008. That’s when a MF Global broker made a nearly $1 billion bet on wheat future contracts from his personal computer, losing $141.5 million and consuming about 6 percent of the company’s capital.

A month later, Davis was named as one of the defendants in a lawsuit by four public pension funds, which alleged the company had improper internal risk controls. Davis left the company in November 2008, shortly after the company agreed to a $90 million settlement.

Reuters recently reviewed regulatory actions against MF Global over the past decade and found the company has drawn more sanctions from the U.S. commodity futures regulators than each of its 14 closest peers, while drawing the second-highest amount in fines, for alleged lapses in risk supervision and recordkeeping.

As Liu and Mayor Michael Bloomberg seek to unify the city’s five pension funds into one system using professional managers and a nonpartisan staff, Floyd and several other NYCERS board members are concerned the new system could put too much power on the hands of unchecked investment professionals. Schloss is leading efforts to engineer the new system, though it’s unclear whether he would ultimately serve as its chief investment officer.

Floyd said the collapse at MF Global offers a compelling case as to why independent boards should continue to play a strong role in overseeing pension fund management decisions — especially when those decisions are made by people with mixed track records.

“The person who gets to make the decisions would ultimately have very few people that would have control over them,” Floyd said. “It would be something like the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.”