Union or Fairshare?

Nurses General Nursing

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I will be starting my first nursing job in a few weeks. My small community hospital just came through very contentious negotiations and now have a union. There are still a lot of strong feelings on both sides. Objectively, the union brought in a significant (and much needed) pay raise for the nurses but lost some benefits too. Many of the nurses that were not for the union originally concede that the union has done a lot of good. My dilemma is, I am unsure. One issue is that I am not sure I could support (for religious reasons) a strike unless it is for a clear safety issue. From personal experience, my husband's union became involved in many questionable (to us) political causes unrelated to his profession that eventually caused him to choose to "opt-out" . While my hospital does not have a "closed shop" I absolutely would voluntarily pay fair-share because all the nursing staff benefits from union victories. To those of you with more experience, how important is union solidarity in today's nursing environment? Would waiting to join until I am sure be perceived as non-supportive? I welcome your thoughts.

-jt

2,709 Posts

you might find more discussion on that over at the new Nursing Activism/Politics section of this website.

I work in a hospital where, even though its our federal right to be represented by a union, we had to fight the hospital tooth & nail 19 yrs ago to be represented by our state nurses association but we did it. And its the best thing we ever did for ourselves. We have a closed shop. There is no other way here. Collective bargaining is ineffective without it. If youre going to be unionized, youre shooting yourselves in the foot if you are not a closed shop.

The whole idea behind UNIONization is UNITY & strength in the numbers that make up the whole. If you dont have a closed shop, you dont have unity - you have a few people working for & paying for the benefit of all - (think welfare rolls & how you feel working hard everday only to have some able-bodied loafers taking a hand-out for their own benefit off your sweat - this does not foster unity - it breeds contempt) - open shops keep the workers divided, the strength of their voice diminshed, their union's hands tied, & the member's collective bargaining power suboptimal.

If there is no unity, you might as well not even have a union. If you do not have the strength of the numbers behind you, your efforts will not be as effective as they would be in a closed shop. And when they arent - because the workers won't let them be -, you will of course hear loud & clear from all those who stand back & do nothing & dont belong but will be the first to scream about how ineffective "the union" is!!

An open shop is to a bargaining unit what scabs are to a strike line.

imaRN

72 Posts

shavsha

"Pooh climbed and he climbed and finally, he got to a Spot at the top of the tree"

I am sorry to say that if Pooh were in a" non-union tree". then Christopher Robin could decide that Piglet should get to be at the top of the tree....and down goes Pooh without any recourse!

...get my drift?...imaRN:D

RNed

110 Posts

There are a number of issues to consider prior to joining a union. Priority one, is the leadership of the union effective. Without good leadership and an active membership the union most likely will not do a good job of representation. With good leadership and an active membership you can accomplish almost anything.

I am not anti-union. However, I do not blindly serve anyone without having measured those who are identified as leaders. This includes unions.

I have a general rule, any nursing union leadership which refers to replacement nurses, more commonly known as those nurses who cross a picket line, as "SCABS" more likely than not represents the UNION first and NURSES second.

Until nursing unions understand they represent nurses first and drop the rhetoric of calling our fellow nurses "SCABS", we will continue to have non-support from a large portion of our fellow professionals. When we call our peers a derogatory name, we give the right for all to call each of us names. It only serves to demostrate we are common labor and should be dealt with as common labor.

Villianizing the replacement worker (calling them "scabs") is a union tactic to serve union purposes, it serves no purpose for nursing. The union needs an escape goat and the adminstration needs to have the forces divided. The more the union fights amoung itself the better it serves adminstration. Adminstration loves to hear that one "loud-mouth" nurse complain about "SCABS" rather then the real health issues. Why does it always seem the media focuses on the "SCAB" yelling and quietly mentions the issues.

And for you union members which would find this offensive. I am one of you and a past union representive. Give respect and we may receive respect. Maybe next year they will not cross our picket line !!

-jt

2,709 Posts

We do not serve the union - it serves US. Our union represents its members - not other nurses who come in from all corners to squash our efforts. It is not our members crossing their own strike lines - its scabs from other states who have no business being there. You cannot have unity while nurses so eagerly fly around the country to spit in the face of other nurses. And it is not those nurses response to being spit in the face which is causing the problem. Scabs need to take responsibility for their own actions - not complain about the response their actions bring. If your child hit her sister & the sister protested, would you reprimand the sister who was protesting or the child that did the hitting?

Call a spade a spade. Even the newspapers articles do. Respect goes both ways. If someone is doing something that is disrespectful, why should they be accorded any respect for themselves or their actions? Especially by the people they are disrespecting. If they cant handle the response that their actions bring them, then maybe they should think twice before doing it. Do you have respect for someone who walks by & slaps your face? Do you have respect for someone who helps someone else defeat you or hurt your family? Some battered women may have some strange sense of respect for that kind of individual but unionized nurses do not suffer that affliction.

It always amazes me that people get upset with those who use the term that has ALWAYS been the name for the work those individuals do.... instead of being upset with the individuals who are being disrespctful & crossing another RN's strike line in the first place. "Replacement staff" is sugar-coating it to make it more acceptable. It is NOT acceptable. It never has been.

If strike-breakers cant face the realities of what they are, then maybe they should stay home & take care of the pts in their own state. The anger nurses feel against them has nothing to do with "the union" leaders. SCABS being there thwarts their effort & diminshes their bargaining power. Why should the striking nurses whom scabs are helping the hospital to push down have respect for anyone kicking them in the butt? With your logic, the striking nurses might as well just turn around & let the scabs tie their hands & gag their mouths as they walk past them..... Crossing the strike line & keeping the hospital afloat so it can ignore the striking nurses has the same effect & those nurses who are on that strike line are not suffering battered woman's syndrome so they rightly do not feel they have to "respect" being treated that way. If other nurses want to show unity with the striking nurses, they should walk WITH them - not past them. And if they cant do that, they should stay home.....

ON STRIKE

At Lockport Memorial Hospital in Lockport, New York, 127 nurses have walked

off their jobs. The nurses have the support of the other three unions at

the hospital even as the hospital administration began laying off

those workers today. THE HOSPITAL HAS TRANSFERRED ALL ITS PATIENTS TO OTHER LOCAL HOSPITALS and has announced that unlike in most nursing strikes in the US IT HAS NO PLANS TO BRING IN SCAB NURSES associated with the US Nursing Corporation and similar groups.

"This is a union town," suggested Edwin J. Robisch, staff and program director for the nurses union. "They know that if they brought in scab nurses, every union member in town would be picketing them." The issues in the strike are staffing, pensions and wages, in that order of importance as far as the union is concerned. The union says that the hospital is intentionally short-staffed and is requiring mandatory overtime from nurses. "This strike is about the nurses coming home after eight hours," Roger Benson, state president of the Public Employees Federation

and vice president of the state AFL-CIO told a rally last Friday. "They get to work and never know when they're going to come home." ......http://www.geocities.com/nurseadvocate >>

On Saturday, July 14th, the Youngstown nurses will hold a major rally and march in support of their 70 day strike.

They've gotten terrific support from the AFL-CIO unions in Ohio. The head of the state AFL-CIO will be speaking on Saturday, along with other labor leaders and someone from AFT.

But the fight has gotten nasty. U.S. Nursing Corps strike-breaking agency nurses routinely roll down their bus windows and yell at the striking nurses, wave their paychecks, take pictures of them, even spit at the strikers. However, the striking nurses will have a peaceful event.

Anyone who can make it is invited to attend Saturday's rally. Meet at strike headquarters, 630 Gypsy Lane, Youngstown, Ohio at 3 PM. Let us know if you're going to be able to go!

go to http://www.ygdna.org, or email [email protected]

anyway, back to the nurse with the original question:

strikes are a last resort & happen only when the hospital forces it. if you cannot walk a strike line because of your religion, thats understandable & something is worked out. we have nurses who are Jehovahs Witnesses who cant strike & although we never had a strike in 20 yrs, we came close twice & made arrangements for them but settled the contract in the last days before the strike started. Nurses Strikes are always about safe staffing, management abusive practices like mandatory OT as well as economics all tied together - because if you dont have a good economic package, you will not be able to recruit & wont have safe staffing levels & you will be forced to do OT to cover the gaps. Nobody goes on strike for trivialities.

RNed

110 Posts

"It always amazes me that people get upset with those who use the term that has ALWAYS been the name for the work those individuals do.... instead of being upset with the individuals who are being disrespctful & crossing another RN's strike line in the first place. "Replacement staff" is sugar-coating it to make it more acceptable. It is NOT acceptable. It never has been. "

I did not say or imply that crossing a picket line is acceptable.

What I wish to convey is the need for "new" thinking within our ranks. I find it just as offensive to be labeled as having a "union mentality" implying less "mental capacity" than those who are not unionized. I certainly do not think my or your mental capacity is less becasue we belong to a union and support a union agenda.

Nor, do I believe those who cross a "picket line" do so with the sole intent to harm the union or our fellow nurses. Although surely they do undermined the power and unity of the picket line they cross.

Our adversary remains the same. Those power brokers who deny satisfactory working environments and adequate pay. I only suggest "new thinking" might indeed bring new solutions.

Over the past 10 years we have failed to provide great improvements in our labor movement. We can not continue to blame "strike breakers, replacement workers or as you wish to call "scabs" as the cause for this failure. That is an excuse our "unions" and "membership" exercise to often.

Our's is the failure to development a leadership capable of uniting all nurses with a clear and concise message and then following up with a clear and concise agenda. We will never organise all nurses as long as we continue to divide and call our fellow nurses names. I believe that to be true and that is all that I said.

"The anger nurses feel against them has nothing to do with "the union" leaders."

The anger nurses feel has everything to do the the "union leaders". "SCAB" is soley, terminolgy of union rhetoric, promoted by unions and for union purposes. It serves no purpose for nurses to call other nurses "SCABS".

We may not walk in the same footsteps, however, we are on the same path.

-jt

2,709 Posts

>

with all due respect......

It serves no purpose for nurses to BE scabs against other nurses.

The thing is that maybe all these nurses are not coming in just to stab the union nurse in the back but once they find that this is what they are being used for & this is the effect their presence has, they still will not stand in unity & say I will not do this anymore. Its one thing to not be aware that what you are doing is harmful to other nurses. Its another thing to know youre causing harm & continue to do it anyway.... & then flaunt it in their faces. THATS where we have the problem.

Its all a matter of perspective.

The solution is simple. Let the scabs stay home.

PS.......

SCABS is what they call themselves, very proudly, on their own strike-finding website. I'm just using the name they have chosen themselves.

canoehead, BSN, RN

6,890 Posts

Specializes in ER.

in the recent nova scotia labor dispute the unions had prearranged to provide 50% staffing in the event of a strike, allowing patients that absolutely could not go elsewhere a chance to get lifesaving care. they also had nurses from the various icu's carry a beeper, so in the event of an emergency (as determined by hospital and union agreement) there was someone available to help. only staff belonging to the union crossed the picket line to go to their scheduled shifts, and the hospital could not hire from outside agencies.

when i heard that the strike actually only meant a 50% staff reduction i doubted that it would be effective. obviously it was very effective, as the government was talking about how nurses had "crippled" the healthcare system. not to mention the fact that they won!! won!! won!!

excuse me, i am still glowing from the victory. :D

-jt

2,709 Posts

Speaking of Union Nurses:

Rx for better care: unionized nurses

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

"The clerk who checked me out at Kaufmann's department store the other day was, until recently, a registered nurse at a local hospital, as was the manager of the Motel 6 down the street. They are among many nurses who have fled a profession in crisis. If you are not a nurse, or a member of another health-care

profession, you may not think this is anything to be concerned about.........

Think again.............

There are few professions that have the potential to affect our well-being more than the nursing profession. Most of us encounter our first nurse seconds after we are born. If we become critically ill, the person who will be at our bedside to get us through the worst moments is likely to be a nurse. And when we are at death's door, we will be fortunate if a nurse is present to comfort and reassure us. Imagine not having a nurse to turn to at these

critical times............

I recently attended a world congress of 5,000 nurses from more than 100 countries in Copenhagen, Denmark. From the Albanian nurses to the Zambian nurses, the concern, frustration and anxiety was palpable. Among the most disenchanted were the nurses from the United States............

To be certified to practice in this country, today's registered nurse must have mastered a complex body of knowledge drawn from basic science, medicine and biomedical technology and demonstrated competence in a wide range of clinical skills. They then have the opportunity to take jobs in hospitals and nursing homes, putting in long hours, working nights and weekends, making life-and-death decisions and earning modest wages. This is what nurses have

always done with little complaint..........

But what has many RNs so upset today is their belief that our current health system's devotion to the financial bottom line is preventing them from providing optimal, or even adequate, care to their patients. HMOs and insurance companies rake in profits by forcing health-care providers, such as hospitals, to cut costs. Hospitals, in turn, squeeze more productivity from their nurses........

Thus, we see widespread understaffing, with fewer and fewer nurses being asked to care for more and more patients. We see an increase in mandatory overtime that compels nurses to work 12-, even 16-hour shifts, reducing their ability to provide high-quality patient care and disrupting their personal lives. And we see nurses increasingly being pulled (or floated) from their usual assignments to work in areas of the hospital where they may not have adequate training.........

The resulting dissatisfaction and disillusionment is reaching epidemic proportions..........

Not surprisingly, nurses are leaving the profession, or reducing the hours they work, at unprecedented rates. In 2000, only 58.5 percent of registered nurses in this country worked full time.........

This has resulted in what many are calling a "nurse shortage." But this is a misnomer..........

There are currently more than 100,000 openings for RNs in this country; however, there are approximately 500,000 trained nurses not currently practicing! Rather than a shortage of nurses, we have a shortage of nursing jobs with sufficiently attractive working conditions and compensation either to bring nurses back or to bring potential nurses into the profession......

The flood of nurses leaving their jobs sets in motion a vicious cycle in which fewer nurses are available to work, leading to more understaffing, resulting in more mandatory overtime and more burned-out nurses, which, of course, results in more nurses leaving their jobs.........

However, many who continue in the profession are responding in a different way. They are shedding the largely passive role nurses have played in the health-care system of the past and assuming a more aggressive, activist role. There is precedent for this.........

Florence Nightingale, the patron saint of nurses, has commonly been portrayed as a selfless handmaiden of healing, when in reality she was a fire-breathing feminist and patient advocate who tried to raise the stature of her profession and questioned the medical establishment of her time. This is the role model nurses are beginning to embrace.........

In Copenhagen, nurses engaged in formal and informal discussions about how to improve health care around the world. Very often, the delegates came to the same conclusion -- nurses can best fulfill their traditional role as patient advocates by banding together to fight for better working conditions and a greater voice in health-care decisions..........

More nurses in the United States and elsewhere have found unions to be the most effective way to gain a greater voice in workplace and public policy decisions. In the United States, only 19 percent of working nurses belong to unions (in the Scandinavian countries it is above 90 percent), but this is rapidly changing.......

Nursing is one of the most active areas for union organizing today. Unionized nurses are winning reductions in mandatory overtime and floating through collective bargaining. They are lobbying Congress and state legislatures for bans on forced overtime and for passage of minimum staffing standards......

Patients and other health-care professionals should not be alarmed by this trend. In fact, they should support it. It is a time of rapid change for the American health-care system and physicians, administrators, government bureaucrats, elected officials, HMOs, and insurance companies all have seats at the table of health-care reform. For a truly patient-centered system to emerge from this process, however, nurses must have a seat as well.......

If nurses can channel the intelligence and energy they put into patient care every day into the reshaping our health-care system, we will all be better off. And if they need to join unions to do so, we, as potential patients, should say:

"Nurses of the World, UNITE!"

Paul F. Clark, author of this article, is professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations at Penn State University.

http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20010724hoped3.asp

fiestynurse

921 Posts

shavsha-- what could possibly be the "religious" reason for not supporting a strike. I know of no religion that would forbid an individual from fighting for better working conditions and safer patient care. Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done now. If being active in a union is not the answer, then what other things do you plan on doing or participating in to support and assist your new found profession?

This is an excellent article just posted on "warm and fuzzy" nurses. Please read it!!

http://www.nurseweek.com/firstperson/jorgensen.html

-jt

2,709 Posts

the "religious" reason for not supporting a strike. what religion>>

Jehovahs Witness. Belonging to the union is a condition of employment at my hospital ( Closed shop). The religious JW are covered by our contract, have their union dues sent to a charity, and cannot walk a strike line. They do support it in other ways.

vicki444

23 Posts

we finished negotiations yesterday and i'm in 7th heaven--fair share was one of the main topics--I am going to suggest that those who don't belong,set up a fund,to reward the nurses who spend hours of unpaid time to settle the contract--this is the only way we can pay them back something--we agreed to a 19% increase over the next 11 months-that has to be a record--i would like to set up a letter to see if anyone has beaten that(inspirational for the teams). We have 22steps--starting goes from17.68 to 21.22 jly02--top step goes from 23.78 to 28.54 jly02--with the $4 noc diff(if you like nocs) talk again vicki

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