YNHH is attempting to block discovery by the union's own arbitrator to gauge executive involvement in anti-union intimidation violating last year's conduct agreement as well as NLRB law.

According to the order, one representative of IRI Consultants to Management, Lou Bardi, met 17 times with “executive leadership to review the campaign,” as well as seven times with “key executives” and 11 times with “senior” and other leaders. Jim Trivisonno, CEO of IRI, also met five times with senior leaders and “management.”

Although the document does not explicitly accuse specific administrators of misrepresenting their role in the anti-union campaign, Meyerson said the document brings into question the extent of Borgstrom’s and other leaders’ interactions with consultants.

“The more we learn, the worse it gets,” he said. “There’s still more to learn, and I suspect it’s going to get worse.”

Petrini said he was unsure what “executive” referred to, though he said senior leadership includes about 40 vice presidents and top directors.

But Kern appears to include Borgstrom among the executives who met with the consultants. In the written order, she juxtaposes the list of meetings with Borgstrom’s statement that there was “insufficient hospital oversight” of the consultants. According to the order, Borgstrom testified on Feb. 12 that she had met Bardi and Trivisonno once in July 2006 and then seen them periodically in the hallways. Immediately following that in the document, Kern enumerates the 40 meetings, as well as 45 other invoices for strategic assistance and advice provided to the hospital during the campaign.

IRI was hired to advise the hospital on how to work within the bounds of the Election Principles Agreement signed last March, Petrini said. The company focuses on preventing unions from forming but is not considered to be one of the most aggressive at union-busting. “Union avoidance” firms, as they often call themselves, now constitute a several-hundred-million dollar industry annually.

Another IRI consultant, Ted Pilonero, attended at least 15 voluntary employee meetings over five months before the union election scheduled for Dec. 20 and 21, according to the invoices. These meetings were later found by Kern to be improper under the election agreement.

Hospital administrators have maintained publicly that senior officials at the hospital knew nothing about the meetings until Dec. 6 because they were implemented independently by IRI. The arbitrator’s order states that Borgstrom had told Kern that she, the hospital’s chief operating officer Richard D’Aquila and labor relations head Ed Dowling all were unaware of the meetings until Dec. 6.

Kern implies in the order that Borgstrom’s testimony was misleading.

“It is to be noted that the June, July, September, October, November and December monthly invoices are date stamped as having been received in the office of Ed Dowling,” she wrote.