Can You Believe It?
San Francisco, CA (WorkersCompensation.com) – A new survey has found that a majority of University of California San Francisco staff in outpatient behavioral health settings have experienced unsafe working conditions due to violence, sexual assault or harassment.
The study, released last week by University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), the union representing the workers, found that 90 percent of the survey’s respondents reported experiencing some type of threat, assault or intimidation on the job, either physical, sexual or verbal. More than 80 percent reported witnessing patients (83 percent) and colleagues (86 percent) being threatened, assaulted or intimidated in their workplace.
The union said the survey came after a stabbing incident last year that took the life of one of their colleagues. Alberto Rangel, 51, was stabbed multiple times Dec. 4 after being attacked by a patient at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office charged Wilfredo Jose Tortolero Arriechi, 34, with murder and an enhancement that he used a knife in the commission of the crime. Prosecutors allege Arriechi had the knife on him when he went to the hospital’s Ward 86, an HIV/AIDS clinic, to speak to a doctor. There a social worker told him to leave, and Rangel accompanied Arriechi to the elevator. As they were walking toward the elevator, Arriechi “grabbed the victim from behind and stabbed him numerous times,” prosecutors said during a press conference in December.
Union officials said Rangel’s death was part of a “growing national crisis.” Matias Campos, Executive VP of UPTE-CWA 9119, said Rangel’s death was a shock, but not a surprise.
“We know a lot of our members historically have expressed their concerns around safety at the workplace,” Campos said. “This is not something new that our union has been calling for or demanding for. We have been doing that for years — advocating for stronger safety measures, adequate safe staffing and case ratios, and protections for social workers.”
In the wake of the attack, the union submitted a list of demands for the hospital, which included the formation of a written safety plan, defined minimum staffing, caseload limits and security standards for high-risk situations, support for affected staff and teams, and ongoing structural improvements to workplace violence prevention.
Rangel’s death was not rare, Campos said, but the latest in a trend toward violence against hospital workers. In 2020, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed that healthcare and social services workers were five times more likely to experience workplace violence, and that healthcare workers accounted for nearly three quarters (73 percent) of all nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses from violence in 2018.
According to the survey of 120 of the UCSF campus behavioral-health social workers, only 5 percent said they had not witnessed any type of harassment on the job. In contrast, 81 percent reported feeling unsafe on the job at least once a month to every day.
The survey found that 50 percent of the respondents reported being sexually assaulted or harassed at work, and of those, 40 percent said they’d been attacked at least four times. Another 60 percent said they’d been stalked or intimidated, and 85 percent said they’d been threatened with violence.
And although 90 percent reported feeling unsafe at work at least once to management, in half of those cases, management had either taken retaliatory action, ignored their concerns or took an “unreasonable” amount of time to address them. Not surprisingly, 71 percent of workers said they’d considered leaving their jobs due to safety concerns.
Robyn Miles, a social worker for UCSF since 2012, told the San Francisco Examiner that the survey results didn’t surprise her. She has experienced various levels of harassment on the job herself, she said.
“I think the majority of things for me have just been sort of like, 1,000 cuts of verbal assaults on the regular,” she said. “Then I have experienced some physical assault.”
Miles, 39, works as a behavioral health clinician at an outpatient clinic. She said she had been attacked recently when a patient through a cup full of coffee at her, hitting her in the head. Miles said she wasn’t injured, but was confronted with a situation where she might have had to work with the patient again.
Fixing the situation and getting more protections for workers has been something healthcare workers have asked for since even before Rangel’s death, union officials said.
“We have been screaming from the rooftops about this issue for years,” UPTE Exec. VP Campos said. “No one took us seriously.”
