Union is in the cards for Kaiser nurses

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/healthfitness/article_1676840.php

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Union is in the cards for Kaiser nurses
Management remained neutral, didn't require secret ballot vote.
By ANDREW GALVIN
The Orange County Register

When Anne Hyatt and 800 of her fellow Kaiser Permanente nurses joined a union recently, the process worked the way labor unions would like the world to be.

Kaiser's management remained neutral during the organizing campaign, neither encouraging nor discouraging the nurses from joining the union. Moreover, Kaiser allowed the nurses to register their choice by signing authorization cards, rather than insisting on the secret ballot it was entitled to under federal labor law.


Union is in the cards for Kaiser nurses
PATIENT UPDATE: Anne Hyatt, RN, a case manager, fourth from left, takes notes during a multidisiplinary pateint care meeting in the critical care unit early one morning at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Anaheim. Hyatt has worked as a nurse at the hospital for the past 20 years. She recently joined a nurse's union.

MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER


"Kaiser was impartial – they really were – and that's one thing that really impressed me," said Hyatt, 52, who works at Kaiser's Anaheim Medical Center. "I really respect Kaiser for the way they went into this."

If the labor movement has its way, more workers would have an easier path to union membership. A bill known as "the Employee Free Choice Act," now pending in Congress, would end an employer's right to demand that workers decide via secret ballot whether or not to join a union and would allow them to choose by what is called a card-check process.

The bill passed the House in March by a vote of 241 to 185 and is now in the Senate. The White House has said that President Bush will veto the bill if it reaches him.

In a card-check process, workers can signal their desire to join a union simply by signing a card in the privacy of their own homes.

FULL story at link.


Also at link: Nurses see benefits of union

When Anne Hyatt was in nursing school in the 1970s, the joke among her fellow students was that after they graduated, they'd earn less than a unionized clerk at the local supermarket.

Actually, it wasn't a joke: Her first job, 30 years ago, paid $5-something an hour.

Today, she earns a lot more than that – somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000 a year (she declined to be specific) as a case-management nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Anaheim.

And last month, she joined a union: the United Nurses Associations of California, or UNAC.

Though a nursing shortage has pushed up pay for nurses in general in recent years, Hyatt has seen her own pay surpassed by staff nurses at her own hospital who lack her specialized training, she said.

The difference? Those other nurses have been represented by UNAC for years.

Hyatt and the other specialty nurses – including case managers, wound-care nurses, lactation consultants and nurse midwives – are paid salaries. Hourly UNAC nurses at Kaiser earn between $30 an hour and about $50 an hour, depending on their experience.

"Since the staff nurses have become unionized, I've seen some benefits for them," Hyatt said. "We feel like we should make at least what the staff nurses make, and maybe a bit more."