Arbitrator upholds vote to establish nurses' union at Tenet hospital in Houston

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/050808dnbustenet.d96a7540.html

03:15 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 7, 2008

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

A nurses' union declared victory again late Tuesday after an arbitrator upheld the state's first successful election to establish a nursing union.

Texas affiliate of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association voted March 27 to organize nurses at Tenet Healthcare Corp.'s Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston.

The Houston vote is important to Dallas-area nurses and patients because it could foretell how similar union votes might end here. Under Tenet's agreement with the unions, nurses at the company's Dallas-based hospitals cannot vote to form a union until 2010.

Tenet said it had received reports that union supporters threatened and coerced nurses opposed to unionization. The Dallas-based hospital system filed objections to the vote with both the National Labor Relations Board and the arbitrator of an agreement Tenet signed with unions last year. That agreement, which guaranteed the unions the right to organize in various states, called for fair elections, free of negative attacks.

Tenet said the Cypress Fairbanks vote — which came in at 119-111 in favor of organizing — should be held again because union representatives created an "atmosphere of intimidation." Tactics included taking pictures of nurses who opposed the union against their wishes, removing a large poster created by the opposing nurses and providing misinformation on the voting process that prevented eligible nurses from voting, according to Tenet.

Tenet appeared before the Houston-based arbitrator in the case last month.

FULL story at link.