St Joseph's Hopsital-Tampa, FL

Its a good way to get fired fast. Just the mention of union at my hospital in Florida is grounds for immediate termination. (Its even stated in the manual we get when hired lol)

Na I live in Citrus County which is North of you It is in our policy, wasnt worded as bluntly as I typed, but it basically says NO LABOR UNIONS OR UNIONS OF ANY SORT.

I did my pedi clinicals their. Anyway, I don't know how you would go about doing it but I do know that there are unions in some hospitals in Florida. Brandon Regional has a union but it's only open to full time RNs. Maybe you could search HCA's website and see what it includes and go from there for ideas. You also might want to contact a lawyer to see how and what you need to do to actually start a union.

Good luck.

You can also contact the United American Nurses:

http://www.uannurse.org/organize/union.html

They have some bargaining units in Florida and I know a few of the nurses that are members.

http://www.floridanurse.org/advocacy/lerc.asp

No, I wouldn't want to work their but not for the reasons that you are having problems. I didn't appreciate the way that we were treated by almost all of the staff while we were their. When I was their the ratio was 5:1 or 6:1 (a pod and maybe 1 pt from another but this was rare) 2 or 3 aides per floor. We weren't allowed to do anything towards pt care expect for what the aides did because most pts got a lot of IV meds (we weren't allowed to give) and other things that we weren't allowed to do because the hospital/school wouldn't allow us. There were RN students their at the same time and they were able to do more pt care.

I did hear that right before we went that the hospital had changed some policies regarding the nursing staff and a lot of them weren't to happy about it. I don't know how ture that was but maybe that's why things were that way when we were there.

Hopefully things get better and you all are able to get the answers you want. Good luck.

Hi PediRN FL,
I am a union nurse and I am a witness to the input we have into our professional concerns & working conditions with our union contract.
Give me a call:
305-458-2969
All the best,
Maria

I am encouraged by this thread! We'll be moving to Jacksonville, FL in a month and I want to know if there are any nurses in Jax that are interested in starting a union at St. Lukes - St. Vincents.