Federal Labor Board to Prosecute Tenet Healthcare for Scheme to Sweep Nurses into Unionization
Employees seek to throw out union after union bosses’ ugly campaign of harassment and coercion
Houston, Texas (April 3, 2009) — National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) prosecutors have filed a complaint this week against Tenet Healthcare Corporation after it entered into a backroom deal with union officials designed to force nurses into union ranks at multiple Houston-area hospitals.
With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, two Houston-area nurses, Esther Marissa Cuellar, a nurse at Tenet’s Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center, and Linda D. Bertrand, a nurse at Tenet’s Park Plaza Hospital and Medical Center, filed unfair labor practice charges alleging that an “Election Procedures Arrangement” (EPA) Tenet and California Nurses Association (CNA) union officials secretly established violates employees’ rights.
The unfair labor practice charges also allege that Tenet officials provided CNA union operatives with unlawful organizing assistance in violation of federal statutes: In Tenet healthcare facilities, outside union organizers are given free reign to aggressively push for a union presence; but Tenet nurses who oppose unionization, on the other hand, are forbidden from using Tenet facilities to express their views.
(Continue reading this news release...)
Comments
Calling Costco, Starbucks, and Whole Foods
I called these three companies but got a voicemail each time--so, I left messages. What is the status of this NRTW effort to stop "backdoor deals" with unions?
We need to get real information and education (not hysteria or fear mongering or name-calling) into the hands of union and non-union workers. I propose NRTW create a line of communication to union members (such as Detroit Auto Workers) that spells out the facts. These people are looking at dollars (dollars lost without employer-paid benefits) and we need to use math and dollars common sense to show them the truth about how employer-paid benefits do not give quality for lower cost.
(Example, 3 million Federal Workers in one plan but for 50% of these people baby-related care is not needed and doubles the cost of insurance. 1.5 million in two groups, one with and one without baby-related care, is better and insurance companies want to do this privately and through employer plans--but OPM says no.)
What I see in the newspaper is that a great number of people who put union-friendly people in office (both parties are guilty...) are now looking at government-forced retirement or reduction in force or benefits to "make the industry whole." (The result of "too big to fail" tactics.)
Why do these people not see the trick used to get them into the union or to vote a certain way? I am stumped.
PS
I am a union member and notice that, with the new Congress, this once nice union is turning to bad ideas through new and abusive pressure on them to go along with bad ideas. This was, and might still be, a good union but it too can get too heady with unchecked power and politics.
Thank you for having such a good site. I hope you will reach out to younger people through Youtube and other youth-oriented venues, the elderly about to retire, and union and non-union members as well. We need to show people mathmatically and quality-of-lifewise how employer "benefits" are not what these benefits seem--they are ownership control of ourselves. Communication and education are key to keeping unions in check.
In addition, I think we need to start with our religious organizations ourselves to inform them that unionizing America will bring forced religion to our shores. (Yes, I have an example.) I will start with my church and family and with information from your website.
Thank you for listening.
Hopefully, my grammar and spelling are okay and I did not make too many typos.
Selma