Texas and area nurses consider pros and cons of unionization

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-NurseUnion_23bus.ART.State.Edition1.46643fc.html

12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 23, 2008

By JASON ROBERSON / The Dallas Morning News
[e-mail]

There hadn't been a nurses' union in Texas since the 1970s – until last month's vote brought one to a Houston hospital. Now it looks like Dallas will be the next battleground.

It was Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., the nation's third-largest publicly traded hospital system, that opened the door to nurses' unionization in this business-friendly, right-to-work state.

A March 27 vote at Tenet's Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston was the first successful union vote in Texas history, although an existing nurses' group here once operated as a union.

A 2003 union vote in Longview, Texas, failed.

But last year, Tenet signed a so-called peace accord with the California Nurses Association, one of the nation's largest nurses' union, as well as the Service Employees International Union, the largest health care union. Under that agreement, Tenet must allow those unions an opportunity to organize employees in certain states, including Texas.

Following its Houston victory, the CNA is hoping that agreement will give it enough leverage to push its way into D-FW, where Tenet owns Doctor's Hospital at White Rock Lake, Centennial Medical Center in Frisco and Lake Pointe Medical Center in Rowlett. From Dallas, the union says, it plans to head into unaffiliated hospitals throughout the state, bringing Texas in line with other states where nurses are organized.

FULL story at link.

[midnight]

1. I'm going to jump ahead of all the retoric, and just say it is a good

thing to belong to a union. Otherwise they ignore you.

[fed_up_mother]

2. Nurses are being used and abused. It's past time for this to happen.