Members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council:
As some of you may already have learned, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, the California Nurses Association, has launched a union-busting campaign against thousands of RNs and other hospital employees in Ohio who are just days from voting on union representation after a three-year campaign. I am attaching a copy of a brochure they are distributing. Undoubtedly the brochure will seem familiar to many of you – you have seen these same materials in your organizing drives produced by high-paid union-busters working for employers. The CNA is also raiding nurse unions in Nevada, interfering in ongoing campaigns in other states, and in the past has filed charges like those by employers to derail card check agreements.
The tactics being used by the CNA would make the Right-to-Work Committee proud. The charges they are leveling against SEIU and Catholic Healthcare Partners, and the agreement they reached on ground rules, are dishonest, ruthless, and anti-union. It’s hard to believe any trade unionist would condone — much less lead — a campaign whose only purpose is to persuade workers to vote “no” in a union election and to deny thousands of workers the chance to have a voice on the job. (Note that CNA is not trying to get on the ballot – their only goal is to get workers to vote “no union.”) Union-busting is union-busting, no matter who is at the helm, and it goes against everything we have all fought for over the years.
I also want to share with you the attached letter to John Sweeney from Michaela Silver, a respiratory therapist in Springfield, Ohio. Michaela is one of the hundreds of activists at Catholic Healthcare Partners hospitals in Ohio who have fought for years and put their jobs on the line to form a union with SEIU. As your read her letter, you can feel the emotion of workers who are seeing their dream of a union threatened by an organization that until a few days ago most had never heard of.
For years these workers engaged in demonstrations and marches, built community alliances and support from elected leaders, and participated in one-on-one organizing in their hospitals and communities. These are not unlike the social responsibility campaigns many of you have engaged in, such as the nearly four-year campaign by AFSCME at Resurrection Health Care in Illinois. Imagine if after a four-year campaign, as Resurrection employees were ready to finally vote, another union with no direct interest in the election showed up for the sole purpose of denying workers their union.
Incredibly, the CNA has even seen fit to attack the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Sister Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association. This comes at a time when the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, and AFT have been working together to try to reach a national understanding with Catholic health care. Unfortunately, we have no hope of fulfilling that goal now that Sister Carol and the USCCB have been subjected to the CNA’s unconscionable action.
What kind of message does it send when an employer that actually does the right thing — by agreeing to fair organizing rules — is then attacked by the labor movement for making a “back room” deal? The last time I checked, all unions shared the same goal of trying to raise the standards for employer conduct in organizing campaigns above those allowed by the NLRB. Since when did agreements for organizing rules become “back room” deals with “hand-picked” unions? In fact, the process we established for CHP hospital employees is ethical, principled, and legal – and in no way justifies the CNA’s outlandish accusations about company unions. (The CNA has organizing agreements with several large health systems, including Catholic Healthcare West and Tenet. Are these back-room “company union” deals too?)
Perhaps even more disingenuous is the CNA’s repudiation of the CHP agreement on the grounds that it does not provide a choice of unions. Should the CNA’s agreements with CHW and Tenet have included a choice of unions for registered nurses? If CWA works to achieve an agreement with Verizon Wireless for a valid union election, should other unions jump in at the last minute? CHP nurses and other hospital employees have been working with SEIU organizers for years. These workers made their choice a long ago. Just because the CNA showed up a week before the elections doesn’t mean they belong on the ballot (or that it’s acceptable to mislead nurses into thinking that a “no” vote will automatically result in a “yes” vote for the CNA).
The situation in Ohio is not the first, and won’t be the last, unless the rest of the labor movement decides to stop these union-busting tactics by CNA and hold them accountable. Unfortunately, our attempts to persuade the top national and state AFL-CIO officers to intervene have been rebuffed. Given our need to grow as movement, we as union leaders must stand up and oppose attempts to prevent workers in this country from gaining union representation. Keep in mind that, while 100,000 registered nurses in California remain unorganized, the CNA is only attempting to organize nurses in other states by raiding other unions or interfering in legitimate, ongoing campaigns. I recognize that institutional rivalries are a fact of life. But there is a difference between legitimate contests between unions and an outright attempt to deny workers the opportunity to organize with any union.
The victims of this tragedy are not the institutions involved – they are the hard-working nurses and other hospital employees who want nothing more than to join together in a union and participate in decisions that affect them, their patients, and their livelihoods. Now, their opportunity for an election free from interference and misrepresentation has been shattered.
I hope you will join me in condemning CNA’s actions. It would be a shame to think we were placing our hopes for rebuilding the American labor movement in the hands of an organization as elitist and anti-union as the CNA.
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