Utah nurses' woes noted at labor meet

WASHINGTON — Democrats and labor unions say the travails of some Utah nurses seeking to unionize show why labor law needs to be made more union-friendly.

"It's nearly impossible (to unionize) with all that employers can do today to try to keep a union out," Bill Samuel, legislative director for the AFL-CIO, told a Capitol Hill briefing for congressional aides that it sponsored Thursday with Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

To illustrate problems, they invited Lori Gay, a registered nurse, to talk about trouble faced by nurses seeking to unionize at the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center during the past three years.

She said 200 nurses there voted in May 2002 on whether to unionize. But the National Labor Relations Board impounded the ballots and has never allowed them to be counted because the hospital's owner, IASIS Healthcare, contends 75 who voted are "charge nurses" with supervisory roles ineligible for union membership. They should not have been allowed to vote, IASIS said.

Regional NLRB officials ruled in the nurses' favor, but IASIS appealed to the full NLRB in Washington. Gay said IASIS has pledged to take the issue of whether charge nurses may join unions all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, ensuring more delays.

"This is not how elections should work in a free and open society," Gay said. "When American workers seek to exercise this right (to unionize), they nearly always run into a buzz saw of employer threats, intimidation, coercion and outright warfare."

Gay said that besides the vote-counting being blocked, her co-workers had to attend "an offensive, mandatory meeting in which we were forced to sit through a one-sided anti-union presentation." Union literature was also removed from all break rooms.

She said nurses were questioned by management individually at other times about their views on unions, and views of others. She said some pro-union nurses were fired, and pay raises and flexible scheduling for others were put on hold. She said some received unfavorable assessments "after years of having glowing evaluations."

Kennedy says he seeks to stop abuses against unionizing by pushing the "Employee Free Choice Act" in the Senate with 26 co-sponsors. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has introduced that bill in the House with 113 co-sponsors.

The bill seeks to make it easier to form unions by allowing representation if a majority of employees sign authorizations designating the union as their bargaining representative.

The bill would also do such things as provide civil fines of up to $20,000 per violation against employers found to have willfully or repeatedly violated employees' rights during an organizing campaign, and would require employees to pay triple any back pay owed to employees suffering discrimination or improper firing.

Samuel said the AFL-CIO does not have high hopes that the bill will be seriously considered this year with Republicans controlling Congress and its agenda but seeks to continue to build support for the bill over time.

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