National Nurses United

NewsBriefs. Oct 2006 10/11/06 10:41 AM Page 5 The decision stemmed from an NLRB case known as "Oakwood Healthcare," in which a Michigan hospital argued that charge nurses should not be included in the bargaining unit because it considered them supervisors. An earlier Supreme Court decision known as "Kentucky River" had thrown out the NLRB's previous definition of "supervisor" that excluded nurses from that category, so the Board formulated this new guideline in deciding Oakwood. Both the American Hospital Association, the hospital industry's trade group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied the NLRB to broaden the definition of supervisor. The NLRB, which is dominated by Bush administration appointees who have proven "It's crazy to say I'm a supervisor," said Martha Kuhl, a charge nurse in the hematology and oncology unit at Children's Hospital in Oakland, Calif. and a CNA/NNOC board member. "In my mind, using independent judgment doesn't make me a supervisor, it makes me a good nurse. I would consider a supervisor to be someone who has the power to hire, fire, discipline, adjust pay, adjust grievances—all those more traditional kinds of supervisory duties and that's really their job. As a charge nurse, my job is none of that." Kuhl noted that having charge nurses protected as part of a union's bargaining unit improves patient care because charge nurses feel safe to advocate for other nurses and patients. "Nurses are always complaining, 'Why doesn't our nurse manager take our side?'" Kuhl said. "Well, because she's a manager and has no protection and has to do the bidding of the employer as opposed to addressing the real needs of patients and the workplace." The board so broadened the definition of supervisor that two dissenting members in their opinion warned that the decision "threatens to create a whole new class of workers...who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees." Up to 36 million U.S. professional workers may fall in this category. Nurses at a Los Angeles protest display the 30,000-plus names of RNs who are willing to strike for their union rights. OCTOBER 2006 hostile to the interests of workers, sided with business as anticipated. "I am so angry because this is a politicallymotivated decision. It's not good for the patients and it's not good for nurses," said Genel Morgan, an ICU charge nurse at MillsPeninsula Health Services in Burlingame, Calif. and a CNA/NNOC board member. "As a supervisor, the hospital sees you as management and therefore you have to support their interest, which is basically the bottom line. As an RN, according to my license and scope of practice, I'm to be a patient advocate. And that is a conflict of interest. So I feel that the NLRB has done a real disservice to the patients across this nation who need the nurse at the bedside to be their advocate." —staff report KAISER CONTRACT NEUTRALIZES SUPERVISOR DECISION nticipating a bad ruling from the National Labor Relations Board on the subject of whether charge nurses, and potentially all nurses, are supervisors, members of the Kaiser Permanente nurse bargaining team this summer successfully negotiated protections against the decision into their recently-approved master contract. The 14,000-plus Kaiser RNs are believed to be the first and only group in the country to have won an employer commitment not to invoke the NLRB decision. The language states that Kaiser "agrees that it will not challenge the bargaining unit status of any nurse or job classification covered by this Agreement, claim that any nurse or job classification covered by this Agreement exercises supervisory authority within the meaning of the NLRA, assign duties to or remove direct patient care duties and responsibilities from any nurse for the purpose of removing that nurse from the bargaining unit, or eliminate or remove from bargaining unit nurses the direct care responsibilities of registered nurses A W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G and nurse practitioners described in the preceding paragraph. Finally, the Employer also agrees that during the term of this Agreement it will not challenge the Union's right to represent any nurse in any job classification covered by this Agreement based on a claim that such nurse is a supervisor within the meaning of the NLRA." Disputes over this issue can be submitted to arbitration. The NLRB supervisor decision was a real concern among Kaiser RNs, many of whom are charge nurses or perform charge duties, said Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, CNA/NNOC vice president and a member of the Kaiser nurse negotiating team. "It's precedent setting," she said. "We're leading the fight. And we want to let the other nurses know that we'll continue to fight and won't leave them behind." Like it did with California's RN-topatient ratio language that the hospital industry attacked, CNA/NNOC will continue to pursue incorporating similar protection language against the NLRB supervisor decision into its other contracts. REGISTERED NURSE 5

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