A head with a heart

(Globestaff/Pat Greenhouse)President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Paul Levy may have found an alternative to layoffs.

It was the kind of meeting that is taking place inrestaurant kitchens, small offices, retail storerooms, and largeauditoriums all over this city, all over this state, all over thiscountry.

Paul Levy, the guy who runs Beth Israel DeaconessMedical Center, was standing in Sherman Auditorium the other day,before some of the very people to whom he might soon be sending pinkslips.

In the days before the meeting, Levy had been walking around the hospital, noticing little things.

Hestood at the nurses' stations, watching the transporters, the peoplewho push the patients around in wheelchairs. He saw them talk to thepatients, put them at ease, make them laugh. He saw that the people whopush the wheelchairs were practicing medicine.

He noticed thesame when he poked his head into the rooms and watched as the peoplewho deliver the food chatted up the patients and their families.

Hewatched the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, whoempty the trash cans, and he realized that a lot of them areimmigrants, many of them had second jobs, most of them were justscraping by.

And so Paul Levy had all this bouncing around his brain the other day when he stood in Sherman Auditorium.

Helooked out into a sea of people and recognized faces: technicians,secretaries, administrators, therapists, nurses, the people who are theheart and soul of any hospital. People who knew that Beth Israel hadhired about a quarter of its 8,000 staff over the last six years andthat the chances that they could all keep their jobs and benefits in aneconomy in freefall ranged between slim and none.

"I want to runan idea by you that I think is important, and I'd like to get yourreaction to it," Levy began. "I'd like to do what we can to protect thelower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the foodservice people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don'twant to put an additional burden on them.

"Now, if we protectthese workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a biggersacrifice," he continued. "It means that others will have to give upmore of their salary or benefits."

He had barely gotten the wordsout of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause.Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.

Paul Levy stood thereand felt the sheer power of it all rush over him, like a wave. His eyeswelled and his throat tightened so much that he didn't think he couldgo on.

When the applause subsided, he did go on, telling theworkers at Beth Israel, the people who make a hospital go, that hewanted their ideas.

The lump had barely left his throat when Paul Levy started getting e-mails.

Theconsensus was that the workers don't want anyone to get laid off andare willing to give up pay and benefits to make sure no one does. Anurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise. Aguy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital inRhode Island suggested working one less day a week. Another nurse saidshe was willing to give up some vacation and sick time. A respiratorytherapist suggested eliminating bonuses.

"I'm getting about a hundred messages per hour," Levy said yesterday, shaking his head.

PaulLevy is onto something. People are worried about the next paycheck,because they're only a few paychecks away from not being able to paythe mortgage or the rent.

But a lot of them realize that everybody's in the same boat and that their boat doesn't rise because someone else's sinks.

PaulLevy is trying something revolutionary, radical, maybe even impossible:He is trying to convince the people who work for him that the E in CEOcan sometimes stand for empathy.