Tenet nurses form council to seek alternate union

[pickledpepperRN]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2901652

Tenet nurses form council to seek alternate union

Mon June 9, 2003 06:03 PM ET

LOS ANGELES, June 9 (Reuters) - Nurses from 22 Tenet Healthcare Corp. THC.N California hospitals said on Monday a statewide council to unionize under the California Nurses Association (CNA), challenging Tenet's agreement allowing workers to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The CNA says the council represents 62 percent of Tenet's registered nurses, and nurses at four more Tenet hospitals have filed for federally-supervised elections to join CNA.

On May 2, SEIU and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees forged an agreement with Tenet allowing employees in its 40 California facilities to join a union without employer opposition and guaranteeing immediate raises and a voice in patient care decisions.

The company said late last month that more than 2,500 health care professionals at six Tenet hospitals in California had voted to join with SEIU.

The CNA has said it plans to challenge the "illegal, fraudulent" deal as an attempt to bribe Tenet employees, deny them choice of representation and potentially harm patients.

CNA says that under their agreement with SEIU, Tenet employees would be locked into a long-term agreement decided in in closed door meetings with top management of Tenet and SEIU.

Tenet, the No. 2 U.S. hospital operator, is reeling from a series of blows, which culminated in the resignation last month of Tenet's chief executive amid allegations the company overcharged Medicare, the government's health insurance program for the elderly.

Last week, U.S. prosecutors charged the chief executive of a Tenet hospital near San Diego, Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, with offering kickbacks and bribes to doctors in return for patient referrals.

[pickledpepperRN]

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=43028&section=BUSINESS&subsection=OC_REGION&year=2003&month=6&day=10

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Today's Orange County business briefs .

More Tenet nurses seek to join union

Registered nurses at four more Tenet Healthcare hospitals - including two in Orange County - filed petitions Monday to hold elections about joining the California Nurses Associations.

Chapman Medical Center in Orange and Western Medical Center in Anaheim have now joined three other Orange County-based Tenet hospitals - Los Alamitos Medical Center, Western Medical Center in Santa Ana and Coastal Communities - seeking to join the state's largest union for registered nurses.

The move comes a month after Tenet announced that it had signed a deal for its nurses to be represented by two non-CNA unions. The deal prompted CNA to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

Tenet spokesman David Langness said the health-care organization is simply giving its RNs an opportunity to vote for one of two unions, and is not "handpicking" any one specific organization.

[-jt]

What a joke. The hospital cant sign any deal to decide which union their employees are going to join. Its the employees right to decide & choose for themselves. The employees are the ones who get to do the shopping around for a union - not the employer. The employer cant just come in & say "heres the unions we'll let you join - pick one of these". They can have no control over it & cant have any involvement at all. Do they really expect to win this court case? All Tenet succeeded in doing was waking up & riling up nurses who might never have considered unionizing before Tenet illegally dictated to them which ones they would be "allowed" to choose. And that little bit about "either the nurses go with the RN union and wait for a long drawn out contract negotiations, or they choose SEIU and get an immediate 8% raise" sounds a lot like coersion. Another illegal tactic. Youd think this hospital corporation has enough trouble already that it would just get smart & play by the rules once & for all.