http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/business/21labor.html?_r=1&ref=policyDavid R. Lutman for The New York Times
Linda Reece, an antiunion nurse, said the managers of Norton Audubon Hospital in Louisville, Ky., “implement what we want.”
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: April 20, 2009
The battle has ground on for 20 years. In 1989 and again in 1994, a clear majority of nurses at a Louisville, Ky., hospital signed cards saying they wanted a union. But each time a majority of the nurses later voted down the idea when it was put to a secret ballot.
Organized labor points to the fight at Norton Audubon Hospital as proof that America’s labor laws need to be overhauled: judges ruled that management had prevailed by illegally intimidating and firing nurses.
Nurses who want a union plan to try again, and they had expected a Democratic president and Congress to retool labor laws to make it easier to win. Instead, in Louisville and around the country, organized labor may be facing a major setback in the most contentious fight over labor laws since the 1940s.
David R. Lutman for The New York Times
Jennifer Smithers, left, and Ann Hurst, pro-union nurses at Norton Audubon.
Right now, unions seem to lack the 60 votes needed to block a Senate filibuster against the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill that would give workers the right to have their union recognized as soon as a majority signs cards calling for a union. The change would make it easy to bypass secret-ballot elections, which are traditionally harder for unions to win.
With Congress returning Tuesday from a two-week recess during which unions deluged the airwaves with advertisements supporting the bill, labor leaders voice confidence that Congress would still enact some far-reaching legislation this year to make it easier to unionize — and they are discussing making some modest changes in the bill to help firm up support. In recent months, corporate interests have lobbied vigorously against “card check,” as the bill is known, because it would most likely enable unions to add millions of members and increase labor’s clout in Washington and at bargaining tables nationwide
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