Unions. What do they do for us?

Hi herring RN,
I appreciate your response..........but my hospital has those things without a union.........we have a nurse policy/practice council, and good staffing ratios. They are posted daily in my state, and ours are better than the union hospitals......Our salaries and benefits are excellant as well. Its not necessary to pay a for profit entity 1% of my gross salary plus 4.00 a pay to speak for me.

Hi herring RN,
I appreciate your response..........but my hospital has those things without a union.........we have a nurse policy/practice council, and good staffing ratios. They are posted daily in my state, and ours are better than the union hospitals......Our salaries and benefits are excellant as well. Its not necessary to pay a for profit entity 1% of my gross salary plus 4.00 a pay to speak for me.

Anyone else see these hospitals' and employers' behaviors and the nurses' responses as being similar, as though we were discussing domestic abuse? Or victims of hostile/involuntary captivity (Stockholm) syndrome?...where nurses begin to identify with and support their boss's policies and their oppressive working conditions?

My union in my hospital ( I live just outside of Settle) takes my raise. Every time I get a raise, my union dues go up.

When Teresa Barnett, a nurse at Menorah Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo.,
began to organize a union at her hospital, she said, “We didn’t even want to use the
word ‘union’ because many of us thought it had a bad connotation.” But, Barnett,
continued, “we really believed we could make a difference by having a legal voice in
the workplace, and unionizing was the way to do that” (Heaster 2001).
With collective bargaining agreements with individual hospitals and chains of
health care facilities, nurses are improving patient care as well as their own economic
conditions. For instance, an agreement worked out in 2002 between CNA and Kaiser
Permanente, covering 10,200 registered nurses and nurse practitioners throughout
California – the largest single contract for nurses in the nation – includes a ban on
mandatory overtime, a guaranteed pension three times larger than the previous plan,
a retirement health plan, and a no-cancellation program covering regularly assigned
shifts, the first of its kind in the industry. The language on mandatory overtime was the
strongest in the country, and the union hopes it will set a national standard (Business
Wire 2002).

Hello All,
When I said a for profit entity, by that I meant that it does profit from the dues of its members. The unions in my state belong to AFT, and the larger union AFL. All anyone needs to do is take at look at their profits, which are posted on the internet. Look at their contributions to lobbyists as well. They do not ask their members which organizations to support. The Presidents, VPs and other administrators of the union do profit by this organization as well. Their salaries are 6 figures, and that does not count the perks of hotels, lodging, and expense reports. In addition, they are salaried by the larger unions in various positions. The union is not there out of the kindness of their hearts, they like a hospital or any organization, are there to make money. When a hospital in my state was closed, the union sought to take dues out of severance pays...........without a contract, there are no dues, so a union does seek a contract ratified, and at times is self-serving in that goal. Perhaps your unions have a better track record. The best thing I can tell anyone is to become informed. If your hospital has not reached the point of a major communications breakdown between staff and management, then approach them as a group and speak for yourselves. Why pay someone a substancial amount of money to do this? As nurses, we are a highly educated group of professionals, use that education to communicate for yourselves.