YOUR TURN SPRINGFIELD REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER

By Rhonda Risner Hanos
Springfield News-Sun
March 18, 2008

Union election fell through because it was a bad deal

The collapse of the rigged election at Springfield Regional Medical Center occurred because the registered nurses and other hospital employees finally became aware of the shoddy nature of the deal between their hospital and the Service Employees union.

And they became aware that they had real alternatives to a union selected for them by their employers.

Here's what many of them learned:

It was the employer, not the workers, who petitioned for the election.
The petition did not include a single RN or other employee card requesting representation by SEIU or any other showing of employee support for SEIU.
SEIU and the employer manipulated labor law to preclude any other organization from appearing on the ballot.
RNs and other employees were specifically forbidden by their managers, with the agreement of SEIU, from talking about the union or the election, a dangerous violation of the constitutional rights of free speech and association.
And, when RNs from the National Nurses Organizing Committee and other Ohio nurses came to talk to them, the hospital obtained a restraining order against them to silence any opposition.

It should be emphasized that it was the hospital's parent company, Catholic Healthcare Partners, and SEIU that made the decision to cancel the election. If the deal was of such benefit to the nurses and other employees, why did they call it off?

If those workers genuinely wanted to be represented by SEIU, and felt their democratic rights were being respected and their voices were being heard, the election would never have been stopped.

NNOC opposed the deal because we believed it violated every principle of what unions represent — offering employees a real choice and giving them the opportunity to achieve a strong collective voice to advocate for improved patient-care conditions and standards for themselves and their families.

While the terms of this pact remain secret, SEIU, under its present national leadership, has a clear and disturbing track record of deals with employers that compromise those standards and endanger patients in exchange for new members.

In New York, for example, SEIU joined with the state's hospital association in agreeing not to oppose hospital and nursing-home closures. In California, SEIU lobbied against reforms to crack down on unsafe conditions and patient-care abuses in nursing homes after signing a nursing-home pact, and it joined the state's hospital industry in lobbying against safe RN-to-patient staffing ratios.

And in Cleveland in 2003, when the county refused to give it a sweetheart agreement, SEIU waged a campaign (later censured by the Ohio Elections Commission for deceit) against a health and human services levy. "The SEIU," wrote the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "is purposefully trying to rip an $80 million hole in Cuyahoga County's safety net by denying basic human services for needy children, the working poor and those in desperate need of mental health treatment" and "cares not a whit for the lives it will crush in the process."

Catholic Healthcare Partners, the Ohio Hospital Association and SEIU may be praising their top-down agreement, but it's hard to make the case that it furthered workplace democracy and free speech, or that it was in the best interests of the nurses, the other employees or the community.

Rhonda Risner Hanos, BSN, RN, is a member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/Ohio and a former member of city council in Brookville.