Union, feminists, Murphys: Dropkick Paul Levy

     Those bagpipe-playing punks, the Dropkick Murphys  have produced a new song and video in support of 1199′s effort to unionize local hospital workers.   Seems like a much better tactic than demonizing the hospital. And maybe that sailor in the song “Shipping up to Boston”  song can get a replacement for his peg leg out of it.

 This evening, the hardball tactics resume. The Service Employees Union/1199  and the National Organization of Women — which is angry about charges of sexism and hanky panky at BIDMC–  will rally at the hospital’s downtown board meeting. The groups are calling for the removal of CEO Paul Levy — who was recently chided and fined for an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

This from the groups’ press release:

BIDMC had as few as three women members amongst the board of 15.  BIDMC currently counts only one woman among the chiefs of its 14 major clinical departments. Two women chiefs have left under Levy’s tenure, and one – a 30-year veteran stripped of her title while on sabbatical – has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit naming both Levy and BIDMC. 

 That lawsuit by Dr. Carol Warfield alleges that she was forced to endure “sexist rants and demeaning conduct… and the insistence on the part of the Hospital’s CEO [Levy] that she tolerate such misconduct as part of the price of being Chief.” The hospital has expended significant resources to defend Levy, fighting unsuccessfully against Warfield’s right to sue for discrimination all the way to Massachusetts’ highest court in an attempt to deny her and other employees their civil rights and the full protection of anti-discrimination laws.

Against Levy’s objections, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) both backed Warfield’s right – and that of other employees at BIDMC – to full legal protection against discrimination.

 The hospital released a statement yesterday in response to the rally and a accompanying  ad campaign Or pop SEIU into Levy’s “Running a hospital” blog for his response to the union’s ongoing campaign again BIDMC.