In Agency's Struggles, Historic Echoes

By MANDY LOCKE

This is not the first time Martha's Vineyard Community Services has faced the predicament it struggles with now.

Twenty-year-old recollections paint a familiar picture of the current battles at the Island's largest health and human services agency.

The early 1980s brought an exhaustive two-year clash between nurses and the agency's leaders. Forces inside and outside of the agency claimed the nursing group could financially flourish outside the umbrella of Community Services. Complaints of meager wages by a newly formed nurses union intensified the fight. Mediation failed. The story ended with mass resignations and the creation of a rival home nursing service.

Those at the helm of Community Services 20 years ago still shudder when they recall this period in the life of the agency.

"It was a very difficult time," said Kerry Allen, a former Community Services board member who served during that era. "It split the board right down the middle. People stopped talking to one another. It got very personal, very ugly."

Community Services' overall financials in 2003 are a bit different today than 20 years ago. Both Island Counseling Center and Visiting Nurse Services, according to management, operate at a loss, kept afloat only by fundraising dollars solicited by the organization's leaders.

But once again, the agency finds itself in a duel.

Mental health counselors, after a year of tense contract negotiations between their union representatives and management, are threatening to strike. As they sort through the details of the newest rift, some community members are asking if a cautionary tale can be crafted from the tensions of 1983.

"If you don't know history, you will repeat it. People forget. They lose sight. They are so in the moment, they don't see what's coming," said Michael Joyce, also involved in Community Services leadership during the 1980s.

During a six-month stretch in 1983, 17 of the 30 home health aides at Visiting Nurse Services quit. The struggles within the agency's largest program came to a head that October with the heated resignation of Barbara Fuller, VNS director. The board split 13 to 12 over the acceptance of her resignation.

Ms. Fuller questioned the structure of the patchwork agency, the leaders of which were in the process of tightening a somewhat loose collaboration between five different programs. VNS footed half of the agency's overall administrative budget and some resented the financial dependence of Community Services on its program.

In the background, at least one local board of health - in Tisbury - canceled its contract with VNS to provide home visits to new mothers and elderly residents, saying the town could no longer depend on the agency to deliver care because of staff shortages.

Nurses were poised to splinter from Community Services - a breakaway bankrolled by $200,000 pledged by private citizens.

A last-ditch effort to settle wage problems and structure issues came under guidance of a federal labor mediator. After four sessions, talks broke down, and the mediator declared the nurses and the agency had "irreconcilable differences."

More than half the nurses of VNS quit in the fall of 1984 to create Home Health Care Services of Martha's Vineyard, a nonprofit agency which later became Vineyard Nursing Association. Vineyard Nursing Association and Visiting Nurse Services now compete for clients in the Island market.

"It's like we've turned back the clock to that period with VNA," said Patricia Costa, a former board member of Community Services. "The only people who will be hurt is the public."

Current contract negotiations between management and staff at Island Counseling Center and Visiting Nurse Services began more than a year ago. The unresolved issue is wages - a sticking point that has intensified negotiations since April. Union leaders and mental health counselors now say that a strike is in the works unless management budges from its original compensation package of a 2.5 per cent cost of living increase. Staff demands an average of 15 per cent salary increases.

Their complaints echo some of the complaints murmured by nurses more than 20 years ago. Wages are too low. Turnover is high. Programs are suffering. Some staff members are wondering aloud whether the agency is waiting for them to leave. They, too, are taking aim at the agency's leaders.

The stand off is expected to come to a head during the annual Community Services board meeting Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Agricultural Hall in West Tisbury. The union has said it will announce during the meeting whether or not counselors will move ahead with a strike.

Staff members have been readying clients for possible disruption in their treatment schedule. Several counselors are planning to treat patients in their private offices during a strike.

Some community members fear that the groundwork has been laid for another splinter within Community Services.

"The seed is there for a similar type of competitive agency," said Mr. Alley. "There are so many counselors trying to make a living on the Vineyard, to have a competitive agency doesn't bode well."

Certainly, the 1980s fracture did not cripple Community Services. But even shortly after the split, some in the health and human services agency questioned the wisdom of the community supporting two nonprofit home nursing agencies.

Anthony DiGuida, former administrator for Community Services Visiting Nurse Services, said in a 1985 interview with the Gazette: "It doesn't make sense for two non-profits to be competing with one another. Right now there are three agencies off-loading their administrative costs on the community.

"It doesn't make sense, and the person it hurts the most is the consumer. And what I think the other agencies are all finding out is that it's not as easy to build a surplus. It's tough," he said.