COUNTYWIDE : Medical Workers May Switch Unions
A group of county medical workers will attend a hearing today before the state Civil Service Commission in Ventura to discuss their efforts to break away from Ventura County’s largest employee bargaining unit and form their own union.
About 240 of the 318 nurses and lab technicians in the county’s Health Care Agency, primarily nurses at Ventura County Medical Center, have petitioned to leave the Public Employees Assn. of Ventura County and form a chapter of the California Nurses Assn.
“We have a lot of problems with the Health Care Agency itself that we want to deal with,” said group spokeswoman Kathy Worden, a nurse at the Ventura County Medical Center.
The county employees association lumps together issues for all of its 4,000 members and does not distinguish between medical and non-medical workers, Worden said.
“We feel we need a more professional union that deals with health care,” Worden said. “We are not street cleaners. What we do affects our patients.”
Although nurses and lab technicians have tried to break off in the past, the group has not come this far before, Worden said.
“We fully expect to win,” Worden said of the group’s latest effort.
A labor dispute last September contributed to the organizers’ success in persuading 77% of those eligible to join the new union, surpassing the 33% minimum needed, Worden said.
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