Mount Sinai nurses vote against joining national union

[bigreddog1934]

This is a real bummer. Its perfectly clear the business community of Chicago is happy, though.

Mount Sinai nurses vote against joining national union

(Crain's) - Nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital have

rejected a national union's bid to organize at the

West Side institution.

The nurses voted against the union, the National

Nurses Organizing Committee, by 293 to 152 in June,

according to a hospital statement released late

Monday.

Fernando Losada, the union's director of collective

bargaining for Illinois, said hospital officials

swayed the outcome by exerting pressure on nurses

through "intimidation and misinformation. "

The union may challenge the outcome with the National

Labor Relations Board based on possible violations of

labor law, he said.

A Mount Sinai spokeswoman said the hospital strictly

followed the board's guidelines leading up to the

election.

"We are in hopes that the union will accept the

results without costly objections or challenges," the

Mount Sinai statement says.

The rejection is a setback for the union, which

targeted Mount Sinai's 508 registered nurses in its

first petition in Illinois in two years.

In 2005, it wrested away representation of 1,800 Cook

County Bureau of Health Services nurses from the

Illinois Nurses Assn. That was the national union's

first push for members outside California.

"This is a huge loss for the union," said K. Bruce

Stickler, a Mount Sinai board member and a labor

relations attorney at Drinker Biddle Gardner Carton in

Chicago, which advised the hospital.

Mr. Losada conceded that the loss "is significant" but

said it won't deter the union from seeking to boost

membership in the Chicago area, where the vast

majority of nurses are not unionized.

[woody436]

Hiya Bigreddog,

2 things:

1) Why is it a bummer?

2) How do you deduce that it's "perfectly clear the business community of Chicago is happy"? I don't see anywhere in the article relating to that.

[bigreddog1934]

Hiya Bigreddog,

2 things:

1) Why is it a bummer?

2) How do you deduce that it's "perfectly clear the business community of Chicago is happy"? I don't see anywhere in the article relating to that.

two very legitimate questions woody.

for the first one, it is clearly a subjective statement of my own, with not so much to back it up. thats my bad.

the reason i say that it is a bummer that the nurses turned down union representation, and specifically the nnoc, is that i feel strongly that as nurses we need our own organization to represent ourselves and our patients. Management routinely meets to determine their needs. I see every reason why we should do the same. It would also provide I direct venue for our patients to participate in the care offered and received. the nnoc provides this, and not in a dishonest, self-serving way.

before i became a nurse i was a carpenter for 15 years, both union and non-union. it wasn’t until i was in the union that i ever had any voice at work about things such as pace and workplace safety. the moment i joined the union my pay went up, i became insured, and most importantly, i could meet with my coworkers about things that concerned our work. The difference was like day and night.

dont get me wrong. i think that the unions out there have become, in many senses, self-serviing bureaucracies. They hold a layer of officials above the membership, overly paid, and that attempt to routinely sell out their people for the benefit of company management. This is why unions legitimately are held in some degree of suspicion by the people they seek to represent. In the carpenters union we fought these people at the same time we fought the contractors. We ran for office, held demonstrations at our district council and built a real rank and file opposition to these practices. (In the process we got the retirement age lowered from 65 to 63 for 34,000 carpenters!)

I feel that the nnoc has been a clear departure from these practices. They have empowered their members to move on behalf of patients and the nurses. They got the 5:1 pt. to nurse law passed in california and are attempting to do the same throughout the country. And the leadership has a dramatically different approach to representation. The executive board, by mandate, has to be comprised by working nurses instead of full time officials. This is a real step toward direct, democratic representation.

This is why I feel it is a bummer that the mt Sinai nurses turned down the union.

In terms of your second question, the only real direct indication that chicago’s business community is happy about the union being defeated is by considering the source of the article, which is crane’s business report. Beyond that one needs to have a little experience with unions to know that businesses try every trick possible to keep their employees unorganized. It just makes sense because any group of nurses coming togethre will want better pay and conditions and they may even want better ratios and patient care. This cuts into the bottom line. this is just a mathmatical difference and one that has carried on for a long long time.

So that is something I just know from experience. But even going beyond this, all one has to do is a little bit of research about the figures presented in the article to know who we are dealing with. The quoted mt. Sinai board member is a union – busting laywer whose main employment is representing companies against their employees and patients. His law firm, Drinker Biddle, boasts of their achievements on their website:

"We prevailed at a federal jury trial in an FMLA, ADA and state law disability retaliation and wrongful discharge case on behalf of a real estate management and construction company.

We won a federal jury trial on behalf of our client, a major insurance company, involving failure to promote and pay claims based on race.

When one of the nation’s leading mortgage companies faced a federal lawsuit alleging reverse discrimination and retaliation, we obtained dismissal of the case after the first day of trial.

We obtained a defense jury verdict in favor of our foreign-based client in a religious discrimination case filed in federal court in Massachusetts. In a pregnancy discrimination case tried before a jury in state court, we demonstrated that, the employee’s termination was lawful.

We obtained summary judgment on a state whistle blowing claim on behalf of a Fortune 50 company.

We obtained summary judgment, affirmed on appeal, in a federal age discrimination and breach of contract case brought by an executive against a major insurance company.

We successfully defended an educational services enterprise in a series of race, ethnicity, gender and retaliation trials in the federal courts in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts following a corporate reduction in force."

This lawyer has made a career of defending business interests and is commenting on the defeat of a nurses organization in the hospital he admisisters. to him its grand.

So I guess ill leave it it at that woody. I hope this is all clear enough. Ill try to be more thorough in my statements in the future. Thanks for asking, in any case. the battles not over by a long shot anyway.

[Kidrn911]

two very legitimate questions woody.

for the first one, it is clearly a subjective statement of my own, with not so much to back it up. thats my bad.

the reason i say that it is a bummer that the nurses turned down union representation, and specifically the nnoc, is that i feel strongly that as nurses we need our own organization to represent ourselves and our patients. Management routinely meets to determine their needs. I see every reason why we should do the same. It would also provide I direct venue for our patients to participate in the care offered and received. the nnoc provides this, and not in a dishonest, self-serving way.

before i became a nurse i was a carpenter for 15 years, both union and non-union. it wasn't until i was in the union that i ever had any voice at work about things such as pace and workplace safety. the moment i joined the union my pay went up, i became insured, and most importantly, i could meet with my coworkers about things that concerned our work. The difference was like day and night.

dont get me wrong. i think that the unions out there have become, in many senses, self-serviing bureaucracies. They hold a layer of officials above the membership, overly paid, and that attempt to routinely sell out their people for the benefit of company management. This is why unions legitimately are held in some degree of suspicion by the people they seek to represent. In the carpenters union we fought these people at the same time we fought the contractors. We ran for office, held demonstrations at our district council and built a real rank and file opposition to these practices. (In the process we got the retirement age lowered from 65 to 63 for 34,000 carpenters!)

I feel that the nnoc has been a clear departure from these practices. They have empowered their members to move on behalf of patients and the nurses. They got the 5:1 pt. to nurse law passed in california and are attempting to do the same throughout the country. And the leadership has a dramatically different approach to representation. The executive board, by mandate, has to be comprised by working nurses instead of full time officials. This is a real step toward direct, democratic representation.

This is why I feel it is a bummer that the mt Sinai nurses turned down the union.

In terms of your second question, the only real direct indication that chicago's business community is happy about the union being defeated is by considering the source of the article, which is crane's business report. Beyond that one needs to have a little experience with unions to know that businesses try every trick possible to keep their employees unorganized. It just makes sense because any group of nurses coming togethre will want better pay and conditions and they may even want better ratios and patient care. This cuts into the bottom line. this is just a mathmatical difference and one that has carried on for a long long time.

So that is something I just know from experience. But even going beyond this, all one has to do is a little bit of research about the figures presented in the article to know who we are dealing with. The quoted mt. Sinai board member is a union - busting laywer whose main employment is representing companies against their employees and patients. His law firm, Drinker Biddle, boasts of their achievements on their website:

"We prevailed at a federal jury trial in an FMLA, ADA and state law disability retaliation and wrongful discharge case on behalf of a real estate management and construction company.

We won a federal jury trial on behalf of our client, a major insurance company, involving failure to promote and pay claims based on race.

When one of the nation's leading mortgage companies faced a federal lawsuit alleging reverse discrimination and retaliation, we obtained dismissal of the case after the first day of trial.

We obtained a defense jury verdict in favor of our foreign-based client in a religious discrimination case filed in federal court in Massachusetts. In a pregnancy discrimination case tried before a jury in state court, we demonstrated that, the employee's termination was lawful.

We obtained summary judgment on a state whistle blowing claim on behalf of a Fortune 50 company.

We obtained summary judgment, affirmed on appeal, in a federal age discrimination and breach of contract case brought by an executive against a major insurance company.

We successfully defended an educational services enterprise in a series of race, ethnicity, gender and retaliation trials in the federal courts in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts following a corporate reduction in force."

This lawyer has made a career of defending business interests and is commenting on the defeat of a nurses organization in the hospital he admisisters. to him its grand.

So I guess ill leave it it at that woody. I hope this is all clear enough. Ill try to be more thorough in my statements in the future. Thanks for asking, in any case. the battles not over by a long shot anyway.

I worked at U of C and started during a potentional Union Strike a few years back. I was pretty much alienated because I didn't agree with nurses and the union, and also alienated because the management was mad because we couldn't come to an agreement. I hate unions and what they stand for personally from my own experience. They don't always help with acuity or save jobs as promise. After the little time I was there, I have decided that I will never work at union sweatshop again.

That is my 2 cents.