NYT: Finally, Nurses Are Set to Vote on Unionizing

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/us/24cncwarren.html?_r=1

By JAMES WARREN
Published: June 24, 2011

It’s easier to be elected president than to win a union representation election these days.

I’m looking at a 2004 photo of a little-known state senator, Barack Obama, addressing a rally at a West Side Chicago church on behalf of an organizing campaign at Resurrection Health Care, a nonprofit, church-run group of hospitals.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is still at it and will finally get a representation election next Wednesday and Thursday among about 270 registered nurses at one of the group’s locations, Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center.

It’s a drawn-out, nearly decade-long tussle fit for the times. The union has met resistance and filed 50 complaints about unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board. The company voluntarily settled 18 of the 50 complaints brought against its various properties before any federal hearing.

No such Chicago community hospital has been unionized, and the national backdrop is clear: distinctly anti-union sentiment; laws that make organizing tougher and employer penalties for breaking those laws modest; a frequent refusal of employers to bargain a contract even after a union wins an election; self-inflicted wounds by a few corrupt unions; citizen ignorance about the positive history of organized labor; and the virtual disappearance of labor reporting in mainstream journalism.

And of course there’s the curiosity of this employer’s being a Roman Catholic nonprofit and relying on a prominent Chicago management law firm, Seyfarth Shaw, which often drives unions batty. The church, especially at headquarters in Italy, has often stoutly defended worker rights.

FULL story at link.