Let workers decide on forming union

Lori Gay is a registered nurse of 18 years at Salt Lake City Regional Medical Center. When the hospital came under new management, Lori decided she wanted to form a union to have a voice in how quality patient care is delivered and to protect herself and other nurses with more experience — and higher salaries — who are often the first targets when facilities slash nursing staff to cut costs.

When Lori began forming a union, management of IASIS (the company that owns the medical center) did everything it could to prevent her and her co-workers from having a free and fair choice in whether or not to form their own organization.

According to election objections filed by the union, during the eight-month organizing campaign, hospital management subjected nurses to mandatory meetings featuring one-sided, anti-worker presentation. Union literature was removed from break rooms. Nurses were forced to attend multiple one-on-one meetings with supervisors to discuss unions. Despite all these tactics, Lori and her co-workers voted to form a union with the United American Nurses. But months later, the company continues to refuse to count their votes.

Bill Estrada works as a coal miner in the Co-op Mine in Huntington owned by the Kingston family. Bill and his co-workers decided to form a union to win improved job safety standards, earn a living wage and have a say in their working conditions. Three of the eight most recent fatalities in Utah mines have been at the Co-op facility, where most workers are paid $5.50 to $8 an hour (compared with the industry standard of $20), medical insurance is minimal and retirement benefits are nonexistent. Both the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the National Labor Relations Board are investigating the miners' claim that management has violated safety and health laws as well as labor laws.

Bill was the leader among his co-workers trying to improve conditions at the mine, and he was fired because of his efforts to form a union with his co-workers. When this happened, the majority of workers at the mine walked out in support of him. When they returned to work the next day, the company refused admittance to the 74 miners who stood together in support of Bill's efforts. More than seven months later, Bill and his co-workers remain on an unfair labor practice strike in their efforts to win fairness at the mine.

Lori's and Bill's stories represent a larger crisis that is taking place behind the closed doors of America's workplaces. Employers routinely thwart workers' efforts to form a union by using harassment, intimidation and coercion. In fact, 25 percent of private-sector employers whose workers try to organize unions illegally fire workers for trying to form a union, according to research by Cornell University's Kate Bronfenbrenner.