Raids on members causing high fever in nurse unions

[Brian]

California Nurses Association may be targeting University of Chicago after Cook County win

If there's a campaign map on the wall at the Oakland, Calif., headquarters of the California Nurses Association, the Chicago area must be ground zero.

Since winning away Cook County's 1,800 nurses from the Illinois Nurses Association, the independent union has linked with nurses at more than 20 Chicago-area hospitals with the goal of organizing a handful of them, union officials say.

One possible target is the University of Chicago Hospitals, where workers from the national organizing arm of the California Nurses have been talking with nurses.

They say they are only helping the 1,300 University of Chicago nurses, who belong to the Illinois Nurses Association. But they do not rule out an eventual organizing drive like the one they successfully staged at Cook County.

The situation is "reminiscent" of what happened with Cook County's nurses, confirmed Fernando Losada, head of Midwest operations for the National Nurses Organizing Committee, the national arm for the California Nurses Association.

Full Story: Raids on members causing high fever in nurse unions [Chicago Tribune,United States]

[Sheri257]

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[pickledpepperRN]

I am very sorry for nurses who are in a union that "partners" with management. Our Southern California Nurse Alliance members working for Kaiser must promote Kaiser as the health care employer and the health care provider of choice.

It is in the contract!

Nurses must advocate for the best interests of the patient NOT the employer.

According to the contract the Kaiser SEIU nurses get no assistance from their union if they need to expose unsafe patient care conditions.

I think "Partnership Agreements" are unethical.

[landshark]

I am very sorry for nurses who are in a union that "partners" with management. Our Southern California Nurse Alliance members working for Kaiser must promote Kaiser as the health care employer and the health care provider of choice.

It is in the contract!

Nurses must advocate for the best interests of the patient NOT the employer.

According to the contract the Kaiser SEIU nurses get no assistance from their union if they need to expose unsafe patient care conditions.

I think "Partnership Agreements" are unethical.

What is more unethical:

Partnership with other nurse unions to unite for power for our profession OR

CNA raiding and dividing nurse Unions....?

It is important that we address this issue.

Nurse Alliance SEIU Kaiser members are proud of the accomplishments we've made. Our union was the first to IMPLEMENT the RATIOS in the State even before things were final in Sacramento --and we are very proud of that victory

[cinja]

Abusive & threatening doctor lawsuit - http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/revpub/E035085.PDF

CNA/NNOC working with nurses in Arizona - http://www.saznc.homestead.com/Jan-Feb_2005_Nurse_Action_web_version.pdf

Georgia, Tennesee, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado! - http://www.calnurses.org/nnoc/

Good luck with Tennesse, its a right to work state. I would love to see the managment sweat when they find out they can't be a bully anymore. Too bad the mentality of many nurses there is that of the servant variety. They would trip over the dollars to pick up the change the management will offer them.

[paphgrl]

Last year my union voted in a new contract with a wage increase. Within two weeks, the other local non union hospital increased their RN wages to retain their nurses. Though they are non union, our negotiations had a direct influence on their wage increase.

We can all thank our union, the ONA, for ensuring nurses are fairly compensated.

[pickledpepperRN]

What is more unethical:

Partnership with other nurse unions to unite for power for our profession OR

CNA raiding and dividing nurse Unions....?

It is important that we address this issue.

Nurse Alliance SEIU Kaiser members are proud of the accomplishments we've made. Our union was the first to IMPLEMENT the RATIOS in the State even before things were final in Sacramento --and we are very proud of that victory

Sorry I was not clear. Thank you because I think this is a very important debate. Maybe more appropriate in the political forum. Anyway I am sorry for the confusion. I am opposed to partnership with management that interferes with the RN legal responsibility to advocate for our patients. The Kaiser partnership does that.

We do work with other unions. CNA/NNOC and AFSCME are working together in Illinois. - http://www.afscme.org/una/una0602a.htm

We worked together with SEIU in California too - http://www.seiu.org/media/pressreleases.cfm?pr_id=1158

We work with our colleagues who are represented by other unions on improving patient care.

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Kaiser Permanente was the leading opponent of AB 394 in testimony at hearings before the State Legislature, and was joined by its labor-management partners, the Service Employees union (SEIU), in lobbying against the law. After the law was enacted, Kaiser, supported by SEIU, proposed a five-year delay in implementation.

Perhaps more than any other system, Kaiser, long the poster child for managed care practices, demonstrated the need for the law. CNA represents 10,000 Kaiser RNs who can testify to the drastic erosion of care standards in Kaiser hospitals and clinics. In the years prior to passage of AB 394, Kaiser laid off over 1,600 RNs in Northern California, and in displaced RNs with unlicensed staff (in cooperation with SEIU, which represents that staff), and adopted some of the worst staffing standards in the state.

Now, Kaiser is posting new RN positions and claiming it intends to meet ratios of 1:4 in Medical-Surgical units, an indication of how poorly staffed most Kaiser hospitals are.

http://www.bmhunion.com/news/faqcalstaffratiolaw.htm

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Regarding partnership with management:

Kaiser Partnership article 1999 - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/05/07/BU79463.DTL

http://www.seiu121rn.org/tenet/kp.cfm

Strike for safe staffing in Denver - http://www.labornotes.org/pdf/magazine/0500_gruelle.pdf#search='Kaiser%2C%20SEIU%2C%20partnership'

Opinion from Labor Action Coalition - http://www.laboraction.org/html/partnerships.html

"The strength of our labor management partnership continues to be one of our key competitive advantages." -Kaiser

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries (KFHP/H) reported that total revenue for 2005 increased to $31.1 billion from $28 billion in 2004. - http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-16-2006/0004283616&EDATE=

I cannot agree to a partnership where patients wait for care and hospitals in low income areas are closed while revenue goes up.

[pickledpepperRN]

Originally Posted by landshark

Nurse Alliance SEIU Kaiser members are proud of the accomplishments we've made. Our union was the first to IMPLEMENT the RATIOS in the State even before things were final in Sacramento --and we are very proud of that victory

That is truly an admirable accomplishment. Congratulations!

[djv]

To bad the unions are not in North Carolina the CNA could use then as well the nurse staff.

[pickledpepperRN]

To bad the unions are not in North Carolina the CNA could use then as well the nurse staff.

As posted before it is up to the nurses.

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North Carolina hospitals, traditionally a group with little concern of being the target of union organizing efforts, should take heed. The National Nurses Organizing Committee ("NNOC"), an arm of the California Nurses Association ("CNA"), appears to have North Carolina in its sights.

http://www.wcsr.com/default.asp?id=114&objId=56

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A compilation of information from colleagues at Georgia Nurses Association, Hawaii Nurses Association, Arizona Nurses Association, North Carolina Nurses Association, and the ANA/C, the American Nurses Association affiliate in California.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3902/is_200506/ai_n13643819

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North Carolina anti union law firm - http://www.laborlawyers.com/CM/Important%20New%20Legal%20Developments/Healthcare%20Labor%20Alert%20%20CNA%20Jan.%202005.pdf

[REHRN]

This posting may get me in dutch but I really do need say what I am thinking.

I grew up in a union family (CWA - Communication Workers of America) my mother was the Union Rep for her floor at the telephone company. I believe that Unions can do an awful lot of good and was raised to always support the Union.

I am nursing in New York State. The hospitals here are represented by the New York State Nurses Association. The Nursing salaries in the hospitals range anywhere from 18.00 and hour to 22.00 an hour. I worked in a hospital where the starting pay is over 21.00 an hour and all you need is an ASN to make that wage.

Now back to my point. The hospital I used to work in had a Union Rep (she has been a nurse for 19 years) that was just awful to the new nurses, she was very abusive and notorious for making the new nurses cry and feel like total idiots. If she couldn't break them down on the floor, she would go to the nursing director and paint them to be incompetent so they would be fired (even though they were as competent as any new nurse) but because she was unable to get the satisfaction of making them break down (as was done to her when she was new) she wanted to get them fired and because she was the union rep she could. Management listens to Union Reps, in some cases fears Union Reps. She misrepresented the union abusing her power in this fashion. She and the other nurses that were heavily involved with the union (all have been in the profession for better than 15 years) were the only nurses on the floor that would not help out the other RN's, LPN's or Aides. She and the others would just sit at the nurses station and bs while the rest of us were working our tails off. It is because of this that I am very hesitant to join a nursing union. This one group of nurses that hid behind the union left a horrible taste in my mouth where unions are concerned. Everytime I think of joining the union all that comes to mind is these nurses who did whatever they could do to get out of doing anything except causing misery and creating more work for everyone else.

This has been hard for me to deal with because of my pro union upbringing and the behavior displayed by these nurses only makes the union look bad.

[pickledpepperRN]

Oh I've experienced that too.

I went throught registry to a hospital to a medical surgical unit. A patient returned from radiology on a flat gurney short of breath.

I wanted to get the uncomfortable patient back in bed but no one would help. Both transporter and a nurse said, "It's not in my job description."

and "The union will back me up."

Finally a student who was there to go over the chart for the next day helped get the patient in the bed.

(I reported the incident with quotes to the union, but I am not a member so don't know the outcome.)

People like that give unions a bad name.

It is managements responsibility to manage.

If nurse representatives tried to get nurses fired we would report them to the union staff, hold an election, and vote them out.

They are supposed to represent the members!

Only patient advocacy takes precidence over working conditions of the nurses in a nurses union.

[NurseKevin]

I have a question, the facility that my wife works in just voted to join the CNA (GAG*SPUTTER*COUGH). How does she get out of having to pay the dues, or should she just look for another job?

Just curious, because we both hate the leftist socialist organizations that are known as Labor Unions.