{"id":46597,"date":"2019-04-18T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/labor-union-sues-to-block-privatization-of-alaska-psychiatric-institute\/"},"modified":"2019-04-18T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T14:00:00","slug":"labor-union-sues-to-block-privatization-of-alaska-psychiatric-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/labor-union-sues-to-block-privatization-of-alaska-psychiatric-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor union sues to block privatization of Alaska Psychiatric Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE &mdash; A labor union is suing the Alaska governor&rsquo;s administration to halt the privatization of the state&rsquo;s main psychiatric hospital, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>The Alaska State Employees Association has filed court paperwork seeking a restraining order in state superior court to block the administration of Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy from turning over management of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute to Wellpath, a Tennessee company, Alaska Public Media reported Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/no-bid-contract-for-psychiatric-institute-raises-questions\/\" target=\"_blank\">privatization plan introduced in February<\/a> has been criticized for bypassing a competitive bid process and for federal complaints filed against one of two companies that merged to form the Nashville corporation.<\/p>\n<p>The Alaska State Employees Association represents about 8,000 workers, including 211 employees of the psychiatric hospital in Anchorage who could lose their jobs under privatization, said Jake Metcalfe, the union&rsquo;s executive director.<\/p>\n<p>The hospital is currently operated by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.<\/p>\n<p>The union&rsquo;s actions are based on what it perceives as a breach of labor laws affecting employees, Metcalfe said.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The state has gone ahead and signed a contract with a private employer and not given our members the contractual rights that they have, or the opportunity they have to show they can do the job cheaper and provide a better service,&rdquo; Metcalfe said.<\/p>\n<p>The administration cannot comment on pending litigation, said Dunleavy spokesman Matt Shuckerow.<\/p>\n<p>Arguments are expected to be heard in court before the end of next week, the union said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>\u2022 This is an Associated Press report.<\/b><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plan has been criticized for bypassing a competitive bid process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":46598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-46597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46597"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=46597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}