Views > April 27, 2008 > Web Only

Demolition Crew Butts In Where Deft Organizers Need To Tread

By Hans Johnson

The image of the “thin blue line” has become common shorthand for the heroism and public trust associated with police officers. But seldom do we glorify the thin white line of nurse professionals who maintain our public health system, despite conditions that may put at risk their own health or capacity to practice.

Like police officers, nurses depend on solidarity to do their jobs. And they need the right to enact that value by forming unions and bargaining contracts that set humane wages, hours, and patient-to-nurse ratios. The significance of unions to nurses hit home for me when a caregiver in my native Midwest described how she and colleagues were literally made sick by forced overtime and increased loads of patients at their facility. If she protested, her manager told her, the hospital would file a claim of abandonment of patient against her and step up efforts to decertify, or dismantle, her union.

Such management resistance and the difficulty of curbing it during workplace elections are major factors in limiting union rates among nurses to just under 20 percent. Now, instead of setting its sights on the huge share of non-union nurses interested in forming bargaining units, the California Nurses Association (CNA) has targeted groups of nurses already represented by a larger rival, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In a key battle in Nevada and elsewhere, CNA has even taken up the management threat of decertifying the existing union as one of its weapons.

Proud of having beaten Gov. Schwarzenegger’s slew of ballot measures in 2005, CNA covets footholds in other states. But more than just expansion and the clout that comes with it are at stake. CNA has targeted SEIU over its strategy of finding common ground with some health care chains, such as on expanding public funding to cover patient care, and neutralizing employer opposition to unions.

SEIU’s novel approach in removing barriers to union growth has made inroads at facilities operated by Kaiser Permanente and Catholic Healthcare West, where SEIU now represents many health professionals. It has also given SEIU fluency in a fresh approach to union advocacy that links patient care to workers’ rights, speaking not to self-interest, but rather to shared priorities with the public, such as safe conditions and high-quality, affordable care. Beyond the esoteric world of union politics, SEIU has gained rare traction with elected officials and mainstream voters.

CNA’s criticism of organizing strategy may be fair game, but union demolition is not. So heated has CNA’s scorched-earth battle against SEIU become that fisticuffs erupted between the two sides at a recent union conference in Michigan. At the least, the fracas serves to further dispel the sexist notion that nurses are pushovers, agents of altruism who may suffer quietly and back away from a fight.

Neither progressives nor Americans in general should back away from this dispute simply because they find it petty or distasteful. All consumers lose when one of the strongest voices for patient care gets drawn into a shouting match. The confrontational approach by CNA against SEIU undercuts one of the few forces in society willing to push the actuaries, CEOs, and policy-makers who oversee our broken health care system to listen to health professionals and work with them to fix it.

That nurses, the incarnation of care in the eyes of Americans, should now be a bone of contention among unions is a clue to their paramount value as our nation’s conscience. Unlike priests, they do not bear the stigma of exploiting vulnerability. And unlike faith-based institutions, which in general have been complicit in the 50-year decline in union membership by turning away from issues of morality and justice involving workers and workplaces, nurses are tackling them head-on.

Caring for patients can be a harrowing job. I remember a nurse telling me about the common experience of wanting to sleep but instead lying awake, running down in her head the list of patients from her previous shift to confirm if she had handled every instruction, handed off every assignment, or more subtly still, heard every clue in what a patient or family member might have said that could bear on a diagnosis or treatment. This she did for more than twenty patients every day, sometimes after having worked an extra shift without notice. She told me this in the company of other nurses. They did not one-up each other with laments, but rather nodded together as if to say, “It comes with the territory.”

Such soul-searching is at the core of the profession and a vivid reminder that all Americans have a stake in union nurses’ fight to set patient care ratios at humane levels. The strands of our nation’s safety net are woven from the fiber of individual conscience. In the fight they have picked with another union to represent nurses, is it too much to ask that CNA leaders stop to reflect on what broader harm their campaign might be causing?

[Editor’s note, 4-29-08: Prior to founding the political consulting firm Progressive Victory, Hans Johnson helped lead list-development and communications efforts at SEIU. Since then he has not worked for the union.]

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• Reader Comments

  Can’t Andy Stern find someone who is not on his payroll or vendor list to attack CNA?

  Progressive Victory (a data brokering firm) seems to have been doing a lot of work for SEIU lately. I’m sure this pro-SEIU article is just a coincidence.

  Posted by saccovanzetti on Apr 27, 2008 at 8:11 AM

  Since I know nothing personally of the Author, I’ll refrain from attacking his motivations or associations as the above commentor did. 
  However, I do have to say this reads pretty much like an SEIU press release.
  “ SEIU’s novel approach in removing barriers to union growth” has largely consisted of selling out worker rights and the public welfare in the name of growth at any price.
  The pitch to he boss is: you give us organizing rights, we’ll refrain from asking too much in bargaining, we’ll prevent our members from blowing the whistle on your practices, we’ll use our political power to keep regulators off your back and we’ll support your legislative agenda, regardless of its effect on the public good.
  For some worthwhile references, see here:
  http://www.calnurses.org/seiu-watch/pdf/seiu_to_tenet.pdf
  ( a letter from SEIU 1199 pres Rivera detailing some of the things they agreed to in exchange for organizing rights at Tenet Healthcare.)

  And then see here:
  http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-02-20/news/local-union-leader-rosselli-blasts-seiu- -boss-andy-stern/full
  for some of how the “innovative approach” is working out in California’s nursing home industry.

  Also this rather ludicrous statement begs to be addressed:
  “So heated has CNA’s scorched-earth battle against SEIU become that fisticuffs erupted between the two sides at a recent union conference in Michigan.”
  There were no nurses, or at least no CNA nurses participating in the “fisticuffs”.  CNA nurses were in the banquet room at the Labor Notes conference when a large group of SEIU staffers tried to crash in by force.  Labor Notes staff had been forewarned and arranged for an impromptu security detail made up of volunteers from a number of unions - Teamsters, CWA, UAW and others to block their access.  CNA nurses had an evacuation plan and seeing no value in becoming embroiled in physical conflict left by the back door.  No CNA members or staff were in the lobby where the conflict took place.  For more details from some non-CNA sources - people with considerable history and respect in the labor movement - see here:
  http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3624/

  Or here:  http://www.kclabor.org/wir4152008.htm?emc=&m=3899652&v=1022453018&l= =1

  And with this statement:  “CNA against SEIU undercuts one of the few forces in society willing to push the actuaries, CEOs, and policy-makers who oversee our broken health care system to listen to health professionals and work with them to fix it.”

  I assume you are referring to CNA, not SEIU, since the SEIU approach under Stern has been to actively undermine real healthcare reform by colluding with folks like NFIB, Walmart and Arnold in favor of the forced insurance model of fake healthcare reform.  CNA on the other hand, has consistently stood up and called out the insurers and fought for the rights of patients.

  I could quibble elsewhere, but that’s a start.

  Posted by Chico David RN on Apr 27, 2008 at 5:21 PM

  Like a lot of agencies and organizations that care about progressive politics, Progressive Victory and the columnist seem to be community supporters of SEIU’s overall aims of civil rights and universal health coverage. What a concept! A union that bothers to cultivate and
  draw on volunteer support and even advocacy from members of the community who share its values. The columnist here makes that very point, that SEIU is a rare kind of union in speaking to people beyond its own membership. Labor gaining resonance beyond its limited ranks shouldn’t be cat-called, but complimented and replicated.

  Posted by Gary22 on Apr 28, 2008 at 9:00 AM

  Thank you Mr. Johnson for putting this CNA vs. SEIU debate into perspective.  It’s a shame that you and your organization were attacked for simply voicing support for SEIU’s efforts to win a stronger voice for nurses and healthcare workers across the country.

  In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a registered nurse on staff at SEIU.

  I think the reference to “fisticuffs” really started when CNA derailed the election of more than 8,000 registered nurses and other hospital employees in Ohio.  The workers had been fighting for more than three years for the freedom to form a union--and were so close to having that dream realized. They had won an agreement with Catholic Health Partners (CHP) that allowed employees to honestly and freely debate whether they wanted to form a union, without pressure from the hospital or the union. 

  But just days before their scheduled election, dozens of CNA organizers flooded the state, initiating a hostile “vote no” campaign. I’ve heard some reports of organizers dressing up as pizza delivery drivers to sneak into the hospital and even using the hospital’s pneumatic tube system to send their flyers to patient care areas. As a result of CNA’s actions, it was clear to the workers that a free and fair vote was no longer possible.

  Many have asked why the CHP employees don’t just go ahead and vote. Well, if you and your colleagues waited three years to have the chance to make a free and fair decision, without fear and misinformation, why vote now when CNA is playing the role the boss would have played?

  Posted by KB RN on Apr 28, 2008 at 3:09 PM

  Same tired old tale, but continuing to repeat it does not make it any more true.  The workers at CHP did not win an organizing agreement, SEIU bought an organizing agreement - almost certainly by giving up large swaths of the worker’s rights and the public good.  if allowed to stand, this would have become the template for organizing everywhere - compliant unions colluding with the boss to “organize” workers and shut out any union that actually stood up for either the workers or the public interest

  Posted by Chico David RN on Apr 28, 2008 at 3:21 PM

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