Battle Over Union for Nurses Goes to a Vote : Labor: More than 350 health workers represented by a large public-sector organization may jump to a statewide nursing association.

Ventura County’s largest union of public workers and a statewide nursing association have reached the showdown stage in a battle over the membership of 356 county nurses and psychiatric technicians.

The key issue is which union can better represent the special interests of the county’s nurses in contract talks.

Ballots mailed today ask these Ventura County Health Agency workers to make a choice: Stay with the local Service Employees International Union, which covers 4,000 county workers; switch to the California Nurses Assn.; or go without union representation.

The force behind the drive to jump to CNA, nurses say, is dissatisfaction with the SEIU. The organization negotiates contracts for 700 public employee classifications in nine bargaining units, including, among many others, maintenance workers, secretaries, tree cutters and nurses.

The nurses say they want a union that fights not only for good salaries and benefits, but also for higher hospital staffing levels and other issues that allow the nurses and psychiatric technicians to deliver quality health care. They say they believe that patient safety gets lost in a mire of economic concerns.

“We’re going ahead,” said nurse Judith Overmyer, a leader in the move to switch to CNA. “We want representation by a professional organization with a tried-and-true record of representing the interests of nurses. And that’s CNA.”

In anticipation of the ballot, local and national SEIU officials have been trying to discourage county medical workers from joining the CNA, which now represents 27,000 nurses statewide. Of these, 8,000 are public employees.

“That’s the only reason we exist out here--to service our membership and to retain and expand our scope of representation,” said Barry Hammitt, executive director of SEIU Local 998.

The problem, some nurses and CNA organizer Pat McCarthy say, is that the SEIU is conducting a smear campaign against the CNA in the process.

“I think that it’s insulting to the nursing chapter,” McCarthy said. “They deserve better. They deserve respect for their issues. Instead of slamming CNA, they should say what constructive things they would be doing to retain the unit.”

Hammitt said it’s too bad that the CNA and county nurses are trying to put a spin on what is really happening.

“Purposely throughout this campaign we have not dealt with any of those (negative) issues,” he said. “We have not as an organization made accusations as to any person who supports CNA (or) about CNA as an organization. I wish I could say the same for Ms. Overmyer and Ms. McCarthy, who have attempted to make this whole campaign not one of issues, but one of personalities.”

McCarthy dismissed Hammitt’s contentions in a word: “Nonsense.”

However, Overmyer and Diane Seyl, public health nursing coordinator, acknowledged that Hammitt’s personal style has been an issue in the past.

“We had requested a more professional presentation and he ignored us,” Overmyer said. “We don’t want to come over the way Barry Hammitt comes over, being nasty.”

Seyl agreed. “We want to work with our administration,” she said. “We feel we have a better chance to do that if we join CNA.”

Despite the SEIU’s attempts to retain the 356 members, Overmyer and McCarthy predicted a switch to CNA. After a labor dispute in September that left widespread dissatisfaction with the SEIU, 77% of those eligible to join said they would. For CNA to win, just over 50% of those voting must side with the association.

“I’ve been here nine years,” said Seyl, who coordinates the county’s AIDS program. “We’ve tried to work with SEIU for a long time. We’ve all become frustrated with SEIU’s inability to help us.”

Hammitt defended the local union’s record with the nurses, saying that all three of their top-priority issues were granted in the last round of negotiations.

“Our position is that SEIU has done a yeoman’s job for nurses throughout California and this county for a great number of years,” Hammitt said.

If these members leave the SEIU, he said, they will cause damage to both their new and old organizations.

“I think that it weakens all county employees, not just SEIU,” Hammitt said. “I think it weakens the nurses because a body of 150 dues payers, or whatever dues payers they are able to capture, will not have as much political influence as a much larger organization.”

Those eligible to vote in the three-week election, the results of which will be announced on Aug. 19, are employees of the Ventura County Medical Center, Ventura County Public Health Services and Ventura County Mental Health Services.