I really am shocked at this development.  

Unions sabotaging unions is NOT the way to build organizations.

Why is there this antipathy towards the SEIU by the CNA?  

This just boggles my mind.  

CNA is a FAR MORE PROGRESSIVE UNION than SEIU, which is known for selling out workers to management.

You can disagree all you like, but in the long run I think they did you a favor. The nurses will be far better off with a powerful, militant union that doesn't take sh#t from the admin, like CNA. Get to know them, you might come to like them. They will really have your back.

They are aggressive, so they have upset some of the older status quo nurse's unions, but that assertiveness is valuable in a union.

1.  Worker/Human Rights and the Company Union

It is a clear violation of workers' right for them to be offered the following choice: "Either sign up with the boss' union or with no union at all."  This is called company unionism, it is a classic management technique around the world and it destroys the concept of a democratically-elected union.

This is precisely what happened at CHP.  SEIU was unable to organize the RNs at the facility, and was unable to make the threshold for a showing of interest, through signing cards.  The threshold is 30% of workers showing interest, and SEIU simply did not have it.

Registered nurses at the facilities were members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, the national arm of CNA, and called RNs from Ohio and California to help stop this destructive election.  

Those nurses persuasively argued that SEIU's utter lack of support among the registered nurses boiled down to this: 14 nurses support them at 5 hospitals after 3 years of organizing.  That is not a democratic base of support; that is a failed organizing campaign.  

Into this situation, SEIU approached CHP and began negotiating--without the input of workers, without transparency, in a secret back-room deal.  They saw an opportunity to co-opt the labor movement with a friendly union that has a history of not making waves within facilities.

Remember that SEIU's President Andy Stern himself has appeared on the cover of Human Resources Outsourcing magazine, and offered to be the "HR department for corporate America," which includes a commitment to "partnering" with the employer, to ensure that unionized employees will commit themselves to the success of the corporation, even if that mean silencing themselves on patient care.

When RNs in Ohio learned that this was not a union election, but an election filed by the employer for a company union, they were outraged.  What little support SEIU had among nurses collapsed when they heard this, and they had to cancel the election.

2.  Why does SEIU have such a bad reputation among RNs?

SEIU likely spoke to every RN at the facility in their failed organizing drive, and there were historic and professional reasons why only 14 supported their efforts.  Remember--every RN in America has a good working knowledge of SEIU; not the SEIU who is a major Democratic (and Rep, for that matter) donor, but the SEIU as it exists within hospitals.

What do RNs think of SEIU?  That SEIU is not a good protector of RN professional practice.  Remember that being a Registered Nurse comes with an entire professional and ethical code; RNs across the country think that SEIU regularly violates.  The partnerships, for example, directly contradict RNs role of patient advocate, which calls for RNs to work "in the exclusive interests of their patients."  You can't partner with a corporation for their goals AND act in the exclusive interest of your patients. SEIU also has a very poor reputation among RNs for their lack of strong support for safe RN-to-patient ratios.  This is the key issue of professional practice for nurses...will i have too many patients to care for today.  It might sound like arcane policy to a non-nurse, but it is a passionate and life-and-death daily issue for nurses.

This poor track record among RNs bears out in the numbers.  SEIU won't release their numbers of RNs, but some guesses put the figure at about 38,000....much fewer than a number of other unions, despite SEIU being so well-known, nation-wide, and with so many resources.  

RNs across the country are choosing not to join SEIU--and they are doing so will a full knowledge of what SEIU is.

3.  Background on CNA/NNOC

By contrast, CNA/NNOC has become the fastest-growing union in America precisely because we start with professional practice of nurses.  We are run, not by some managers in Washington DC, but by a strong, active board of 30 critical-care nurses, each of whom must be a working bedside nurse.  

These RNs are attempting to build a union modeled on their professional practice, by which I mean they charge the union with acting as "patient advocates."  As such, we exist to support healthcare reform from the point of view of RNs.  This takes the form of sponsoring bills for single-payer healthcare across the country, as RNs know this is the only solution that will work.  It also takes the form of working against mandates to purchase private insurance, which SEIU supports, and for mandated safe RN-to-patient laws, which SEIU opposes.  It means attempting to build a progressive, democratic, activist union that will take on any threats to patient care.

In the past couple of years, CNA/NNOC has become the largest RN union in America, at 80,000 members in all 50 states, with the affiliation of the Maine State Nurses Association and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professions, two of America's most activist and progressive nurses organizations.  We have affiliated with the AFL-CIO as well, in order to work closely with our unionized sisters and brothers on organizing drives and healthcare reform.

If you have any additional questions, I refer you here: www.OhioRNsforDemocracy.org

YOUR TURN SPRINGFIELD REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER

Union election fell through because it was a bad deal

Springfield News-Sun
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The collapse of the rigged election at Springfield Regional Medical Center occurred because the registered nurses and other hospital employees finally became aware of the shoddy nature of the deal between their hospital and the Service Employees union.

And they became aware that they had real alternatives to a union selected for them by their employers.

Here's what many of them learned:

    It was the employer, not the workers, who petitioned for the election.

    The petition did not include a single RN or other employee card requesting representation by SEIU or any other showing of employee support for SEIU.

    SEIU and the employer manipulated labor law to preclude any other organization from appearing on the ballot.

    RNs and other employees were specifically forbidden by their managers, with the agreement of SEIU, from talking about the union or the election, a dangerous violation of the constitutional rights of free speech and association.

*    And, when RNs from the National Nurses Organizing Committee and other Ohio nurses came to talk to them, the hospital obtained a restraining order against them to silence any opposition.

It should be emphasized that it was the hospital's parent company, Catholic Healthcare Partners, and SEIU that made the decision to cancel the election. If the deal was of such benefit to the nurses and other employees, why did they call it off?

If those workers genuinely wanted to be represented by SEIU, and felt their democratic rights were being respected and their voices were being heard, the election would never have been stopped.

NNOC opposed the deal because we believed it violated every principle of what unions represent -- offering employees a real choice and giving them the opportunity to achieve a strong collective voice to advocate for improved patient-care conditions and standards for themselves and their families.

While the terms of this pact remain secret, SEIU, under its present national leadership, has a clear and disturbing track record of deals with employers that compromise those standards and endanger patients in exchange for new members.

In New York, for example, SEIU joined with the state's hospital association in agreeing not to oppose hospital and nursing-home closures. In California, SEIU lobbied against reforms to crack down on unsafe conditions and patient-care abuses in nursing homes after signing a nursing-home pact, and it joined the state's hospital industry in lobbying against safe RN-to-patient staffing ratios.

And in Cleveland in 2003, when the county refused to give it a sweetheart agreement, SEIU waged a campaign (later censured by the Ohio Elections Commission for deceit) against a health and human services levy. "The SEIU," wrote the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "is purposefully trying to rip an $80 million hole in Cuyahoga County's safety net by denying basic human services for needy children, the working poor and those in desperate need of mental health treatment" and "cares not a whit for the lives it will crush in the process."

Catholic Healthcare Partners, the Ohio Hospital Association and SEIU may be praising their top-down agreement, but it's hard to make the case that it furthered workplace democracy and free speech, or that it was in the best interests of the nurses, the other employees or the community.

Rhonda Risner Hanos, BSN, RN, is a member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/Ohio and a former member of city council in Brookville.

The previous post gives the text of a letter written by a failed politician, who recently came in 4th in a field of 5 for a tiny city council race. She is not a CHP nurse.

Here's a letter from Sue Allen, a 30-year CHP nurse who has been organizing on this campaign for 3 years.

Out-of-state union can't know what's best for us

Springfield News Sun (Op-Ed)

Thursday, March 20, 2008

By Sue Allen, RN at Springfield Regional Medical Center-Fountain St. Campus

I keep hoping that I will wake up to find this was all a bad dream. How can it be that everything my colleagues and I spent years trying to achieve here in Springfield was suddenly destroyed by the underhanded actions of an out-of-state organization?

In my 33 years as a registered nurse, I have never experienced anything so personally or professionally devastating.

Those of us who work at Mercy and Community hospitals had been looking forward to the day when we could finally vote on whether to form a union. Many of us felt that joining together in SEIU would make us better advocates for our patients and our community. In any event, it was our decision to make, and ours alone. Thanks to all of our letters to hospital officials, meetings with elected leaders and appeals to the community for support, we had won ground rules that would allow us to make up our own minds.

So you can imagine our dismay when a swarm of organizers from the California Nurses Association arrived with their shocking allegations. I personally have met other registered nurses who are represented by SEIU, and I know for a fact there isn't a shred of truth to what the CNA is saying. But the CNA so confused the situation with their angry rhetoric and distortions that it simply was not possible to proceed with a fair election.

I don't know why an organization that calls itself a "union" would do what the California Nurses Association did. Apparently they have done this many times before in other states. Here's what I do know: Everything we worked for these last three years was sabotaged by an out-of-state organization that doesn't care about us, the people who live and work in Springfield.

This California group doesn't know anything about what we've been through. It doesn't know how difficult it has been to adjust to the merger of our hospitals, not just for the registered nurses, but for the whole team. They don't understand how much we wanted the opportunity to speak with one voice and work together to make our new hospital the best it can be.

It doesn't realize how insulting it is to characterize the ground rules we fought so hard to win as some kind of back-room deal. Or how arrogant it is for them to decide that we would be better off with no union than to be part of the union we chose.

SEIU is the union we've been working with for years, the union that has stood by us through thick and thin, and the union that (unlike the CNA) represents nurses and other hospital employees in Ohio -- including at our sister hospitals in Catholic Healthcare Partners.

Frankly, I don't believe the California Nurses Association shares our values. If it did, it would have known how offended we were by its hostile tone, condescending attitude and disruptive actions in our hospitals while we were trying to take care of our patients.

It's time for the CNA to go back to where it came from. Only then can we wake up from this nightmare, heal the wounds and realize our dream of having the opportunity to freely choose whether to join together in a union.

Sue Allen is a registered nurse who has worked at Mercy Medical Center, now Springfield Regional Medical Center-Fountain St. Campus, for 30 years.

Is anyone buying this bill of goods from the CNA (other than CNA organizers) -

"SEIU and the employer manipulated labor law to preclude any other organization from appearing on the ballot."

It begs the question, is the the CNA is going to boycott the presidential election when they find out they can't get on the ballot in the last week of October?

Please. The California Nurses Association had nothing to do with workers at CHP hospitals until the week of the election after a hard-fought three year campaign.

When they did show up, the California Nurses Association came with one aim only - to STOP 8,000 WORKERS FROM ORGANIZING.

If you are interested in hearing the voices of CHP workers, watch their video, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INPOiFNQQ BY

CNA members, you have got to hold your leadership accountable for what they have done. Your union dues are paying for out-and-out union busting, destroying the hopes of thousands of Ohio families.

IN SOLIDARITY