Unions - Yay or Nay?

[Kiwi82]

For those of you have have worked in both union and non-union hospitals - what are the pros and cons? 

Have any of you worked for a hospital that became unionized while you were there? Pros and Cons?

Need honest feedback!

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

6 hours ago, mmc51264 said:

 From what I see-the unions can also have ulterior motives ($) and are no friend of nurses. 

What sort of ulterior motives?

Your employer is no friend of you either. 9/10 of the crap that nurses in the US have to deal with would not exist if you had strong unions and decent national labour laws. 

No employer  can sack a nurse without going through a proper process in NZ

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

On 11/15/2022 at 12:02 AM, Tenebrae said:

What sort of ulterior motives?

Money. I am in a "right to work" state. They can fire at will. There is no leverage the unions can use. 

Many of the unions promise things that they have no ability to enforce. I think I mentioned that a nurse that I work with, has a friend that works at a hospital that has a union and their staffing ratios are horrendous (6-7 pts to 1 RN). Another nurse wants a union in to manage nursing assistants, which, while O agree wholeheartedly with her, there is nothing a union can do to guarantee anything that has to do with NCAs. 

I grew up in an area where unions were very prevalent. There is a lot of corruption, some creative accounting at times, and no guarantees that they can make life better. 

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

3 hours ago, mmc51264 said:

Money. I am in a "right to work" state. They can fire at will. There is no leverage the unions can use. 

We have unions. employers are not allowed to fire people without a very good reason, after having been through a very extensive process. 

 

There are also steps to deal with an actual dodgy unsafe nurse to minimise patient risk

I had an example with an employer who seemed out to get me after I offered frank feedback on the mean girl bully culture of the organisation and until that culture was fixed the organisation will continue to haemorrhage emploees (proof in point three more employees have quit since I left.

The employer inferred that I had inappropriately accessed patient records that I had no business accessing and told me that if I didn't sit down for a meeting with them they would report me to nursing council for professional misconduct. Despite the fact that I no longer worked for them

The union rep talked me through the process, got me to explain why I had accessed the records in question. When the employer got my answer which basically said I accessed the records to help formulate nursing assessment for inpatients. We also took outpatient calls at the weekend and I would access a record when taking a call to ascertain what the medication was the patient taken so I knew what information to take to the doctor. also accessed information to help inform discharge planning. 

Had I not had input from the union I may have sat down with the employer and ended up with a not good outcome. 

IMO much what nurses go through on this forum is as much to do with shoddy employment law that protects employers more than employees as it is to do with union coverage

[RosesrReder, BSN, MSN, RN]

mmc51264 said:

Money. I am in a "right to work" state. They can fire at will. There is no leverage the unions can use. 

Many of the unions promise things that they have no ability to enforce. I think I mentioned that a nurse that I work with, has a friend that works at a hospital that has a union and their staffing ratios are horrendous (6-7 pts to 1 RN). Another nurse wants a union in to manage nursing assistants, which, while O agree wholeheartedly with her, there is nothing a union can do to guarantee anything that has to do with NCAs. 

I grew up in an area where unions were very prevalent. There is a lot of corruption, some creative accounting at times, and no guarantees that they can make life better. 

I respectively disagree. I have lived and practice in all right to work states and have organized with a very successful union.  It made it for our employer who lived by harassing the nurses not being able to without fair and equitable "trial" for the nurse.  After a while, they became less petty and they fired all their leadership and brought in new that actually worked with the union (the nurses) to make it a better place to work. I am a firm believer that they do work even in right to work states but you have to be willing to do the work and have a strong backbone to go against your toxic employer.

Equally, I have worked in other right to work states with a union already in place, and the same experience.  One union was better than the other but it has been the safest I have ever felt practicing as a nurse.  Sadly, I relocated to a very remote area and I am living in the nation's snake pit when it comes to practicing as a nurse.

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

RosesrReder said:

Sadly, I relocated to a very remote area and I am living in the nation's snake pit when it comes to practicing as a nurse.

I am for a sorry about this. My issue with what was being proposed where I work was, sorry for saying, but ridiculous. I work for a large teaching organization that actually treats staff well. We have good ratios, good pay, good working environment. The ones starting the push are mostly young nurses that have no idea what other places are like-like the snake pit you are in. They say nurse have no say, wrong. I am on several practice councils and I have helped make things better. Our pay/benefits are comparable to others in the region. 

I am not against unions, I just don't think all the ones pushing for it realize what all is entailed. 

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

mmc51264 said:

I am for a sorry about this. My issue with what was being proposed where I work was, sorry for saying, but ridiculous. I work for a large teaching organization that actually treats staff well. We have good ratios, good pay, good working environment. The ones starting the push are mostly young nurses that have no idea what other places are like-like the snake pit you are in. They say nurse have no say, wrong. I am on several practice councils and I have helped make things better. Our pay/benefits are comparable to others in the region. 

I am not against unions, I just don't think all the ones pushing for it realize what all is entailed. 

Its great you've had the experience you did. It's one hospital in one part of the country. 

We have a national collective agreement that ensures that all nurses in the entire country get the same wages and working conditions. 

Our union is far from perfect and we are also helped by having good employment laws that seek to protect the rights of the worker

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

Tenebrae said:

Its great you've had the experience you did. It's one hospital in one part of the country. 

I disagree, it's not just one hospital. I know a lot of nurses that have started where I am and have gone back home or moved to other areas and there are plenty of decent organizations out there. Most of the medical centers associated with teaching facilities are good (not all)

[Jay T]

This may be specific to working in a strong union, but I can give you a side by side comparison of my nurse bestie and I. We graduated at the same time and I got a new grad residency slot in a union hospital while she got one in the non-union hospital where we had been CNAs together. Started at approx. the same time and we'd be considered "same area" even though we worked in different towns.

-Salary: My pay for 12hr day shifts was $74/hr while she made $54/hr including night diff+ a bilingual diff that she took an exam for.

-Orientation: We received the same orientation length of 3 months. Since I was in a union, my orientation was strictly for the unit I was on (They run specialty training separately), while she had the opportunity for a few float shifts to critical care, OR, etc. just for exposure to different areas of the hospital.

-Nursing Assistants: My hospital nearly always had at least one per shift, but if not, they would /usually/ float an extra nurse to assist (along with a breaker). Her unit regularly had zero CNAs and never an extra nurse.

-Breaks: We would miss out on breaks for usually one shift a week, sometimes more during some of the bad Covid waves. She would go for a month or longer at a time with zero breaks for a 12hr shift. Even when Covid waves felt like they had receded, her hospital regularly said they couldn't staff a break nurse.

-Ratios: Being in California, I never worked with more patients than our legal ratios, even during Covid waves when there was a statewide waiver. She regularly worked above ratios with 6-7 patients on telemetry (and this started immediately after she completed orientation), again, even when Covid waves appeared to have receded. As far as we can tell, her hospital took advantage of the ratio waivers for as long as they could, even when censuses were lower.

-Management: I always had cordial experiences with managers and mostly found them to be nice and that they cared about their work. My friend had managers who would regularly berate her and her co-workers like, "Why aren't your patients being mobilized, why are meds being given late, etc." without consideration to the fact that they were working over ratio without relief nurses or CNAs.

Suffice it to say, she now works at my union hospital. Some people can find unions to be stuffy, ineffective, or too many rules. Those are often the same people who don't get involved with advocating for better working conditions. The most important aspect of union work is solidarity and collective power.