[-jt]

WHAT IT REALLY MEANS IS "RIGHT-TO-WORK.....FOR LESS" http://www.uannurse.org/righttowork.htm

[VickyRN]

"Right-to-work"--this, unfortunately, is the norm down here in the Southeast. "RTW" is another way of saying, "don't make any waves!" What is the absolutely MOST threatening word you can ever say in a "RTW" facility??? You guessed it-- the "U" word!!! (Some "RTW" hospital policy manuals STRONGLY discourage any union activity.)

[mattsmom81]

Yup, we have an anti union statement in our employee handbook...

[James Huffman]

Ahh, unions. The siren song of the 20th century, and some nurses think it's the next Big Thing.

What's the real meaning of right-to-work? It's that you, as an individual nurse, do not have to belong to a union, if you do not want to. Simple as that. The 20th century was a time of increasing freedom, diversity, and change, and most workers simply have no desire to belong to the likes of the AFL-CIO (the parent group behind the UAN). More and more Americans work in small businesses or are self-employed, and this has given a range of workplace choices and options unthinkable 50 years ago. The same is true for nurses. Maybe that's why "union membership declined by 219,000 last year to 16,258,000 workers. The percentage of American workers who are currently union members is at its lowest level since the end of World War II. Only 13.5 percent of all Americans are union members, down from 13.9 percent in 1999, and from a high of almost 36 percent in the early 1950s. The percentage of Americans who are union card holders has been dropping steadily for 50 years." (from http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/01/0214/art1.html)

If nurses want to belong to a union, more power to them. But there are many of us who have no desire to affiliate ourselves with the drudgery of unions, complete with their old-fashioned, top-down structure, their inflexibility, and the corruption that seems to go with union territory.

Unions are also not cost-free: the average Teamster, for example, pays around $7 a week in union dues. For those without a calculator handy, that works out to some $360 a year.

Unions may have had their place 80 or 100 years ago. But they are a movement whose time has passed. The American worker is voting with his or her feet, and rejecting this outdated way of dealing with workplace opportunities and problems.

Jim Huffman

www.NetworkforNurses.com

[ktwlpn]

[quote]Originally posted by James Huffman
[b]Ahh, unions. The siren song of the 20th century, and some nurses think it's the next Big Thing.

What's the real meaning of right-to-work? It's that you, as an individual nurse, do not have to belong to a union, if you do not want to. >>>>.In my experience in the great -right to -work state of Pa it means-You do it our way or hit the highway-nothing you can do about it........We also have an anti- union statement in our employee handbook.Recently all 12 hour shifts were deleted-several nurses were hired to those positions and must now either take 8 hr shift or take a hike...Great way to treat nurses in this time of shortage