Mental health counselors at Martha's Vineyard Community Services are now threatening to strike as the agency remains locked in tough contract talks with unionized employees.

For seven months, tensions continued to mount at the negotiation table over pay issues.

At risk are counseling and nursing services for hundreds of Islanders served by the Island Counseling Center and the Visiting Nurse Service, the unionized units of Community Services. In a typical week, ICC handles 180 clients.

In a negotiation session yesterday, agency leaders and union representatives agreed on several contract language items but once more made no progress on efforts to substantially narrow a $100,000 gap between the two sides' ideas of fair compensation.

"It's been a year [since contract negotiations began.] A kind of progress on language items is mixed with a stone wall on economic issues," said Jerry Fishbein, director of Service Employees International Union, Hospital Workers local 767, the union representing more than 30 employees within the two units.

Union stewards alerted agency leaders their membership has granted them the authority to call a strike.

"I think we're at the end of our rope. We've been in negotiations for over a year. The bottom line issue is an overdue pay raise," said Rob Doyle, an employee at Island Counseling Center.

ICC employees secured union representation in June of 2002 after months of heated campaigns within the agency. The National Labor Relations Board added VNS employees to the voting bloc shortly before the election.

Two more negotiation sessions have been scheduled before the agency's annual board meeting on Oct. 28. Union leaders indicated yesterday the public could expect an announcement at the board meeting indicating whether or not they will move ahead with a strike. Under federal labor laws, the union must file with the employer and government officials a 10-day advance notice of an intention to strike.

This week, counselors at ICC prepared their patients for just such an eventuality.

"We have an ethical obligation to help them deal with interruptions," said counselor Jane Dreeben. One by one, counselors are coaching clients on how to deal with missed treatments, or advising them to schedule sessions with a counselor outside of the Community Services campus.

"From my youngest client, who is 16, to my oldest client in his 20s, they've been so incredibly supportive. They keep telling me ‘You have to do what you have to do,'" said Amy Lilavois, a counselor at ICC.

Of ICC's clients, roughly one-third are on the state funded insurance plan, MassHealth. Another third of those patients receive free care or pay on a sliding scale because of limited income.

Throughout the long rift between agency leaders and ICC staff, both sides have resisted disruption in client care. Thus this move toward a strike signals desperation of sorts - a drastic step to push negotiations along.

"We're stuck. They're simply not willing to budge on the wage issue," said Ms. Lilavois.

Management stands by its original package of a 2.5 per cent yearly salary increase. This summer, union employees sought to have a portion of proceeds from the highrolling Possible Dreams auction targeted to wages, Management refused, but offered to run a separate fundraiser for that purpose. The offer for an additional fundraiser, management's labor attorney Richard Perras said, still stands.

The union's wage proposal calls for an average of 15 per cent increases to staff salaries, down from an initial 35 per cent increase proposed this spring. Yesterday, union leaders let go of a clause in their wage package which would establish a committee of employees to weigh in on distribution of Possible Dreams proceeds.

Management criticized the union's threats, calling the potential strike a step backward.

"We hope they don't do anything as drastic and unnecessary as this," said Mr. Perras. "A strike will be absolutely counterproductive. A strike will be about as counterproductive as threats [the union] made to disrupt the auction."

Mr. Perras said the agency is bracing itself for a strike, though he refused to offer details about those provisions.

"We will be and are adequately prepared to address the needs of community and everyone we serve [during a strike]. But this really is a terrible distraction to what we should be doing," Mr. Perras said.

Employees who choose to strike face a risk. They forego wages, and they could also lose their jobs. If the union launches an economic strike - a protest over wages or other unresolved contract issues - management can hire permanent replacements.

"Some people will be unable to walk out because of financial hardship. Others worry their insurance will be yanked," Mr. Doyle said, noting that each ICC and VNS employee may decide whether or not to strike.

Some counselors will simply see their patients at their private practices. Five counselors, including Ms. Dreeben and Ms. Lilavois, recently formed a collaborative office in Vineyard Haven where they treat patients outside the umbrella of Community Services. The agency does not require clinicians to sign a noncompete clause.

Ms. Dreeben said that patients could be seen at their Vineyard Haven location during a strike.

"We've talked with our ethics boards in our particular fields to make sure this is okay," said Ms. Dreeben.

These counselors, she said, would make every effort to treat patients unable to pay. Community services, unlike most private clinicians on the Island, serves patients covered by MassHealth. State regulations require counselors to offer 24-hour emergency services to receive MassHealth reimbursement.

One source of union frustration is the continued refusal of members of Community Services' board of directors to communicate directly with employees. ICC employees have made several attempts to air their grievances with board members over the last year.

The agency's leaders are deferring all communication with the union and the public to Mr. Perras.

The leaders said they are trying to abide by federal labor laws, which prohibit management from pressuring employees in contract negotiations.

Ned Robinson-Lynch, executive director of Community Services, will not address labor issues with reporters, and has not done so for months.

The latest invitation by the union to board members "to hear more than management's perceptions of [the union's] request" was rebuffed a few weeks ago.

"The board will not meet with bargaining unit members regarding contract negotiations. The board is 100 per cent supportive of the MVCS management and negotiating team in these contract negotiations. Their proposals are our proposals," said Ursula Ferro, chairman of the board in a letter to the union Sept. 30.