Nurses Denounce Bush Labor Board Ruling on Union Rights As Assault on Democracy

For Immediate Release
October 3, 2006

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, today sharply condemned a ruling by the Bush Administration's labor board that it said could deprive hundreds of thousands of registered nurses of their workplace protections and democratic rights. It could also endanger patient safety and create chaos in the nation's hospitals.

In a ruling released today, the National Labor Relations Board, now stacked with Bush administration appointees hostile to unions and the rights of working people, declared that hospital RNs across the country who exercise professional clinical judgment in the interests of patients are "supervisors" and thus ineligible to join unions.

RNs are the primary target of the case known as Oakwood Healthcare which involved efforts by a Michigan hospital to block RNs from union representation. Affiliates of the American Hospital Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce initiated the case.

The Board ruled 3-2 to exclude "charge nurses" who perform clinical assignment from union rights – but the effects could go far beyond charge nurses. As two board members wrote in their dissent, the majority had created a "new class of workers under Federal labor law" under which "may fall most professionals."

CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said the decision "provides employers a road map to exclude hundreds of thousands of RNs from their rights. It forces RNs to choose between protecting their patients and keeping their job."

DeMoro said there will be "a comprehensive response to this disgraceful decision." CNA/NNOC represents 70,000 RNs in 44 states, and also works with thousands of other RNs in the American Association of Registered Nurses as well as the 10 million members of the AFL-CIO. Initially, she said, CNA/NNOC will:

1. Put employers on notice in all CNA/NNOC-represented facilities that the RNs will strike if the employer seeks to exploit the ruling. More than 30,000 CNA/NNOC members have already signed strike pledges to do just that.
2. Hold protests or other public events with RNs Thursday, October 5 in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, and Bangor, Me. as a beginning wave of actions in response to the decision.
3. Work with the AFL-CIO and AARN on legislation in Congress to overturn the decision.

The broadest and most immediate impact of the ruling is on public safety, DeMoro said. "In an era of corporate medical care, when hospital corporations make daily decisions that put patients at risk, RNs must be are able to intervene to protect patients without fear of losing their job or other retaliation.

"Union representation is the only effective security for an RN to fulfill that role. The hospital industry wants the first allegiance of the RN to be to management and the corporation's profit, rather than to the health and welfare of the patient."

The second major industry goal, DeMoro said, is "to roll back a decade of gains that RNs have won, through their unions in compensation, benefits, and working conditions. But the consequence could well be a dramatic escalation of the nursing shortage. Facing the erosion of their livelihood and security for their families, and the ability to improve patient care conditions, thousands of RNs may simply leave the profession."

DeMoro also condemned "the collusion of the Bush administration with the hospital industry and the biggest corporations in the U.S. in seeking to deprive American workers of their most fundamental Constitutional protections – their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to choose a union."

However, DeMoro emphasized "through necessity, RNs have learned how to fight for their patients and themselves against ruthless employers, and this ruling could spark upheaval in every hospital and healthcare setting in this country."

In recent months, CNA/NNOC has already sponsored protests in California and Maine, and a sit-in at the national headquarters of the American Hospital Association in Chicago to protest the pending decision. That, she said, is just the beginning.

CNA/NNOC noted the significant dissent by two NLRB members, Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh, who criticized their colleagues for a ruling that "threatens to create a new class of workers… who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, not the statutory rights of ordinary employees."

Liebman and Walsh said that the board majority had violated the intent of the National Labor Relations Act with a decision and interpretation "that is revealed as untenable."