INCREDIBLE CNA/NNOC victory in Houston.

Nurses union has plans for Texas

It's only been a few days since the California Nurses Association won its first victory in Texas by organizing 275 registered nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital, but it's already setting its sights on the future....

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5670280.html

If nurses want to help our health system move to the healthy side of access and safety for patients and nurses, we need to unite, as RNs, to move our agenda forward. This is about more than wages and benefits. It is about the health of our country. For our country to be listed #37 in the world, for positive health outcomes is appalling. That is what NNOC is all about.

These nurses announced their union last summer. It seems not to be legally recognized but united=union? ??

If any group needs to unionize, it is TENET nurses. They should do it nationwide.
If TENET can afford $450,000 a year for Jeb Bush to sit on their Board, and that is "customary" for a Board member, than screw them.

TENET is the most, or at least one of the most, abusive environments for nurses to work in, unless you just want to make money because there is generally a lot of overtime, since they are shunned by many agency nurses.

You go Texas Nurses, hat's off to you

Wish the rest had that many cajones

Texas Observer

April 18, 2008
...A UNION WINS ONE

The National Nurses Organizing Committee, née the California Nurses Association, broke through an important barrier last month. On March 28, a majority of participating nurses at the Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center voted to let the union negotiate a contract on their behalf, making the Houston facility the first privately owned hospital in the state to unionize.

Cypress Fairbanks is owned by scandal-plagued Tenet Healthcare Corp....
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2737

This week registered nurses at Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas voted out the CNA as their union in an election. The decision by Scripps nurses to eject the CNA follows contract negotiations that didn’t result in real improvements for nurses or patient care.

In her post on another thread, Sherwood said:

Scripps Health System in San Diego California has five hospitals total and several clinics. Because of California Nurses Association interference and poor contract negotiation, The Encinitas nurses were actually making less per hour than their counterparts at other Scripps facilities. Another fact is that in the previously mentioned CNA press release the union took credit for a lift team that was already in place at the hospital.

This is the second attempt made by Scripps nurses to hold the CNA accountable for improving conditions for nurses at their hospital.

For months, the CNA has been mounting campaigns to persuade SEIU nurses to decertify their union in hospitals in states including California, Ohio, and Nevada.

In March, the CNA sabotaged a three-year effort to win a fair process for 8,300 nurses and other workers at Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) hospitals in Ohio to freely choose whether to form a union with SEIU. Just six days before CHP workers were set to vote, CNA organizers came to Ohio to launch a vicious "vote no" campaign that ended in the cancellation of elections.

Maybe they should have been focusing their efforts on their own nurse members rather than wasting their dues dollars to sabotage other nurses.

For more information, visit www.shameoncna.com.

I guess you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I imagine Scripps made bargaining hard. If the nurses were not united, that made it easier for the administration to be punitive in it's contract offers.

Too bad the RNs let a good thing go. But the bottom line is that YOU are the union. If you don't want to unite and fight for patient improvements, then unionizing isn't for you.

What I'd really like to see is 1. How many of those 119 nurses actually JOIN the union and pay dues, and 2. How many dues paying members there are in 3 yrs.

My guess: less than half to start and less than a third in 3 yrs.

Texas is open shop. You can have a union if you like, but joining is optional. Whatever they negotiate has to be offered to everybody (although non-union employees can be offered MORE and often are, to break the union.) Paying dues is optional.

All the benefits of a union, none of the dues. What a great deal for the 60 or so nurses that voted for the union but won't join.

Even at the VA San Antonio when I worked there and HAD a union, less than 10% of the nurses belonged. I'll give an example of 'elective dues paying'. When it's elective, how many nurses pay to join ANA? About 5%. There you go.

It means very little to unionize a Texas hospital. Go ahead. Unionize them all. I still won't join. Fortunately, I won't have to.

~faith,
Timothy.

In my opinion, the previous comment was made by a rugged individualist. I have never found nursing to be an individualist profession. Yes, we are each responsible for our nursing practice. But without the support and mentoring we provide for each other when we are working, it would be impossible to do our jobs safely and adequately. It is telling when an individual is willing to enjoy the benefits others have worked to achieve, without appreciation or participation in the process.

I believe we have all noticed the down sizing of nursing staff. Or has it been that way so long, and you are so new to nursing, that you know no other manner of caring for sick patients, except to be totally understaffed?

This thread also discusses union raiding. For nurses who believe this is the real topic, I would ask you look deeper. The whipped up emotion concerning "raiding" is a diversion from a more important issue. The issue is democratic union functioning vs union/corporate partnerships. Do so many nurses out there really believe any union is better than no union?
What if a union gives away your rights in the interest of corporate profit?
As a nurse, your rights to safe working conditions acts also in the interest of patient safety.

Corporate health care is the issue. In the quest for more and more profit, the patients for which I care are being dangerously short changed. As a unified group , nurses could change this scenario. Unions are more than a bargaining unit to which folks pay dues and in return receives raises. Unions gave us the working conditions which this country enjoys. I do not think anyone would be interested in returning to the days of enforced child labor.

I would suggest nurses research a little history on each union of interest. Emotional responses to trigger words, like "raiding", and "open shop" do not service nurses or our patients.

"Being a good nurse is not always the same as being a good employee."

Advocacy for our patients should always be our primary mission, even when it is in conflict with our employer's bottom line. An open shop is promoted by employers and union busters as "free choice". It's really a signal to employers that they will continue to have the freedom to exploit and abuse workers.

Hospitals are reimbursed for nursing care, yet hospitals fast track patients and emphasize through-put over restoration to optimal health. Restructuring "engineers" and "consultants" redesign "workflow" and give patients "passports" and "boarding passes" that replace nursing judgement so the bosses can increase volume and maximize their profit at the expense of patients.

This interferes with the nurse-patient relationship; "lean and mean" is not an environment of care that is conducive to the nursing process! Nurses leave the profession because they aren't allowed to provide the care they know the patients need; the care that they were educated to provide.

A strong union and professional association, such as CNA/NNOC-Texas protects nurses who choose to advocate in the exclusive interests of their patients. No nurse should be threatened by "discipline and discharge" for speaking out against and working to change unsafe conditions. Safe Harbor is an administrative den of iniquity; Don't go into their den alone. Take a CNA/NNOC nurse rep with you! Weingarten Rights: if you're unionized, you get 'em! You may not realize you need them until it's too late to save you from unjust "discipline."

Mandatory overtime, fatigue, unsafe ratios and management's failure to increase staffing for high acuity patients, lack of proper equipment and adequate supplies, too few ancillary staff, and frequent interruptions cause preventable errors and poor patient outcomes. Hospitals often blame the nurse instead of trying to fix the system.

If you work to weaken the solidarity of your peers, then at least have the intellectual honesty to refrain from calling the union a failure. Without the support of the majority of the bargaining unit members, it surely will be. I suppose there will always be freeloader nurses who take, instead of pay their dues money to help provide for the common defense. Go ahead, take the benefits and run; maybe there are those who can outrun their conscience.

Responsible nurses throughout Texas have organized with CNA/NNOC. Instead of whining about how bad things are they have collectively and actively begun working to overcome the hospital industry's barriers to patient and professional advocacy. To those who would fault them for that I would say, lead, follow, or get out of their way. Pay your fair share and let those who can, DO!