Nurse testifies rights trampled

WASHINGTON — Lori Gay has been a nurse for 21 years at the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center and she made clear to Congress on Tuesday that the only thing she supervises is "a pencil" during some of her shifts.

The distinction is important because a decision made last year by the National Labor Relations Board allows the hospital to classify Gay and other nurses as supervisors, barring them from being eligible to form a union.

Gay testified about her exact responsibilities before House Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee. Chairman Rob Andrews, D-N.J., has a pending bill that would clarify the law so only those who spend "a substantial amount of time" in a supervising role are legally called supervisors.

Andrews said there are an estimated 8 million people like Gay in nursing, retail, technical work and other professions who are not supervisors, but the board's decision last year created a "Bermuda triangle" where workers' rights that had been in place for 60 years "just disappeared," he said.

Gay, who was asked to testify by the United America Nurses union, described the responsibilities of a charge nurse. She said when her turn to be the charge nurse comes, she spends about 10 minutes a shift filling out a sheet assigning nurses to patients.

"Basically, as charge nurse, I am in charge of a pencil," Gay said. "I record the traffic in and out of the unit — it's as simple as that. I don't have the authority to hire, fire, evaluate or promote other nurses, nor do I have the authority to discipline another nurse for not taking an assignment, or for doing an assignment poorly."

The nurses voted on whether to form a union in 2002 but the hospital's owner, IASIS Healthcare in Tennessee, argued that charge nurses were supervisors and could not vote to form a union. The ballots have never been counted, which Gay blames "more on ambiguous legal language than anything else."

After decisions by the board last year, a regional office decided that 64 out of 153 nurses at the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center were supervisors, including Gay, and could not form a union.

"Simply labeling someone a supervisor doesn't make them a supervisor if the institutional structure doesn't support it," Gay said, adding that there are days when every nurse on the floor has at one time or another served as a charge nurse and is therefore deemed a "supervisor."