National Nurses United

EFCA:1 12/19/08 10:08 AM Page 11 LINDA BRAUCHT | PURESTOCK | GETTY IMAGES ShowingTheirCards Card check is not a novel or new method of organizing workers. Thousands of registered nurses in California hospitals—including Palomar Pomerado Health, Antelope Valley Health, and Tri-City Medical Center—have used this route to join CNA/NNOC under laws that allow public-sector employees to simply show a signed majority of cards. The process is tried, tested, and has produced dramatic improvements for RNs. "Card check is an easier process and doesn't allow management time to get in there and coerce staff to change their minds and vote against the union. You turn in your cards and that's your election right there. We even won a strike vote to pressure them to recognize us, and that got their attention, shall we say. The whole process went pretty fast. The biggest thing that's different now is being in the union gives you a voice. No matter what the issue is, you have a way to get your views across to management. They really seem to work with us now. Before, they didn't have to." —Jan France, critical care RN at Palomar Pomerado Health DECEMBER 2008 threatening phone calls purportedly on behalf of the union. Intensive care unit RN DeAnn McEwen remembers how the union-busting agencies Long Beach Memorial Medical Center hired to break up their organizing drive very clearly set about dividing up the nurses by age, race, ethnicity, and gender. The RNs at Long Beach Memorial lost their first election by an excruciating 10 votes, but won their second campaign about a year later. "Half the RNs on my floor were Filipino nurses, and I remember one day the manager comes around and starts tapping them on the shoulder and saying you need to go to an in-service meeting, and I noticed it was only the Filipino nurses they were pulling," said McEwen. "They're always trying to separate people out. They tell the younger nurses that everything's done by seniority and they'll never get Thanksgiving off." In contrast to a union-busting campaign, nurses say that collecting signature cards is a fairer and less intimidating way of determining support for a union. "It would have saved a lot of headaches," said Diane Flores, RN in the mother-baby unit and chief nurse representative at Citrus Valley Medical Center. "Many people wanted the union, but were afraid." Opponents of EFCA argue that collecting cards somehow deprives workers of their right to vote in an election, but supporters argue that participating in a rigged election is not really a right at all. Based on their experiences, cards are a way of voting—but can be discussed and signed or not in private and not under the eyes of the hospital. RN peers or union organizers, basically people on an equal footing with the voters, would be asking nurses to sign the cards. "As nurses, we put our names to medical documents all the time," said McEwen. "It would be no different with union cards. People understand what they're doing when they sign their name to something." I W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G REGISTERED NURSE 11

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