National Nurses United

RAD2:2 4/24/08 12:38 AM Page 11 Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director, CNA/NNOC Keeping Ohio in the 21st Century Note to the Service Employees Internati0nal Union: nurses and women are not objects of trade the blizzard was overwhelming, visibility was near zero, there were many more miles to travel, and only emergency vehicles were supposed to be on the road. But CNA/NNOC board member Trande Phillips, RN kept driving. "This is an emergency," she told me later. Without receiving a signed union card from a single employee, the Ohio-based Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) chain had filed for a union election itself after reaching a backroom agreement with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Ten days before the election, some 8,000 employees, including more than 2,000 RNs, received the election notice in the mail, along with a warning that they were forbidden to speak about the impending election with coworkers. Before that mailing, employees had not seen nor spoken to SEIU representatives for several years. Concerned NNOC members in Ohio began asking questions. How had this happened so suddenly? Why had the employer, and not an organizing committee, filed for the election? Why weren't any other unions allowed on the ballot? Why weren't they allowed to discuss this with coworkers? Within days, volunteers like Phillips arrived in Ohio to address members' concerns and demand that fair, open, and worker-requested elections take place. The employer's election was called off as suddenly as it had been filed. The narrowly averted disaster of SEIU's secret agreement with CHP management is symptomatic of an insidious resurgence of company unionism. Just below the surface, however, lies a complex web of interconnecting struggles for justice, all of which would have been compromised and perverted by CHP's handpicked union. What is most disturbing about SEIU's attempt to sidestep a democratic labor movement is the fact that the majoriAPRIL 2008 ty of workers affected would be women. Although nursing today is a diverse field, it remains a profession dominated by females. Nursing has a long and iconic history as one of the few legitimately recognized "women's professions," most likely because it entails caring for the very young, the very old, and the unwell, as many women did as a matter of course throughout history. The role of nurse evolved naturally from the hearth to the hospital, as did the paternalism that initially bound women to the home. Instead of being assistants to their husbands, nurses were expected to be assistants to male doctors—indeed, women were nurses because they could not reasonably expect to become doctors themselves. SEIU's covert deal with hospital manage- To them, RN labor is something to be profited from, but RN self-determination is a disaster to be avoided, and a reason to call off the specially constructed election. SEIU's attempts to pervert the spirit of workers' rights by colluding with the employer in secret to thrust a handpicked union upon the nurses should be condemned by all democratic organizations. Shame on CHP for perverting the spirit of the Catholic church and abusing the trust many people hold in the church by attempting to disempower female workers. SEIU and CHP's arrogant assumption that the women wouldn't want to bother themselves with the details of their union arrangement is only evidence as to why women and workers alike must band togeth- Nurses are far too educated, too skilled, too levelheaded to be anything but self-reliant, and employers and regressive unions alike should heed that lesson. ment reinforces a historical precedent of misogyny by treating a group of predominantly female workers as chattel. Until recent decades, it was perfectly acceptable for a women to be considered property—an object, not a subject. She would be protected and safeguarded by her father or another male relative until such time that a marriage would be appropriate, at which point her ownership would be transferred to her husband. Simultaneously objectified and infantilized, she had to trust that the decisions being made on her behalf were in her best interest, and was expected to quietly acquiesce to what was demanded of her. What nearly occurred in Ohio was a marriage arranged by a paternalistic employer worried about losing control of its workers and a paternalistic union that agreed to take over the workers' management in the employer's interest. It was a business arrangement by men in which women are objects of trade rather than trading parties. W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G er to show that they have numbers, they have strength, and they have a vested interest in their destinies. The paths to self-determination traveled by both the women's and labor movements are often one and the same and their justice struggles are inextricably combined. Employers and unions alike should know better than to cross one, or both, at the bargaining table. Nurses are far too educated, too skilled, too level-headed to be anything but selfreliant, and employers and regressive unions alike should heed that lesson. Nurses don't need a father-like employer making decisions in their best interests and colluding with a husband-like union. They need unfettered access to the power, their power, to achieve what is best not only for themselves, but for all women, all workers, and all patients, everywhere. I Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of CNA/NNOC. REGISTERED NURSE 11

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