Nurses Win 2-Year Fight to Unionize

THOUSAND OAKS-After struggling for more than two years to gain union representation, nurses at Columbia Los Robles Hospital/Medical Center learned Friday that they had triumphed with a solid 167-104 vote favoring unionizing.

Emergency room nurse Brenda Perry, a 14-year veteran of the Thousand Oaks hospital, watched as an elections clerk with the National Labor Relations Board stacked the two piles of ballots--those in favor and those against--in a conference room at the board’s Los Angeles office.

When the in-favor stack grew visibly bigger, the union organizers said, they cheered and hugged.

“It’s so incredible after all this time,” said Perry, who despite the union’s lack of management recognition has served as the shop steward for Local 535 of the American Federation of Nurses for the last year. “It has been so long and we have been in such a battle.”

Pay cuts, staff and scheduling changes prompted the drive for representation in 1994, and votes were actually cast in June 1995. But legal appeals by the hospital administration stalled the vote count until now.

Columbia spokeswoman Kris Carraway said the company’s attorneys plan to challenge 14 ballots that were not included in Friday’s count, but acknowledged that those votes would make no difference to the outcome.

“The hospital is disappointed with the results of the election,” Carraway said. “We respect the rights of our employees who chose to be represented by an outside third party, but our position has always been, and will continue to be, that the best way for us to work with our employees is without the intervention of an outside third party.”

Hospital management has long resisted attempts to unionize, and even at Friday’s ballot count the officials were aiming to get some of the votes thrown out.

“Just before the count they attempted to challenge people they hadn’t before,” said Jim Moreau, a union organizer with the American Federation of Nurses, which is part of the Service Employees International Union. “I just hope they negotiate now.”

Carraway said hospital officials are willing to work with the union.

“We are here to operate in good faith,” she said.

Shop steward Perry said Local 535 will begin bargaining as soon as possible to bring back a $2-an-hour weekend differential the nurses lost in 1993 and to fight the move to replace registered nurses in some areas of the hospital with licensed vocational nurses and nurses’ aides.

The ballots counted Friday were cast 14 months ago, but because of a dispute with management over voting eligibility, the National Labor Relations Board has been holding on to them since the nurses voted on June 8, 1995.

Of the roughly 340 nurses at the hospital, union organizers estimated 25 were management and unable to vote. But hospital officials contended that all but one of the registered nurses there should be considered supervisors, and thus part of the management team that is ineligible to vote.

After a lengthy review hearing stretched over 14 days, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in May 1995 that 320 of the nurses were eligible to vote. But because hospital representatives appealed that ruling a few days before the vote, the June 1995 ballots were exiled into a locked container, awaiting a decision by the board’s national office in Washington.

Even before that delay, the Los Robles nurses had faced a long road in their efforts to unionize. They began working with representatives from the American Federation of Nurses in February 1994, when the Thousand Oaks hospital was still owned by HCA-Hospital Corp.

At that point, they complained that their benefits had been cut, costing them annual vacation time and sick leave. Staff members were angered over the loss of the weekend pay differential and again when many 12-hour shifts were converted to eight-hour days, eating away at their overtime pay.

Changes to the pay scale caused further consternation; some longtime nurses who had been at the hospital said they discovered they were making less per hour than new hires.

The nurses were concerned about a national trend toward replacing registered nurses in some positions with vocational nurses, who are licensed after less training. Furthermore, the union representatives said they were concerned that staffing cuts were affecting patient care.

Just as the union drive was kicking into full gear, HCA-Hospital Corp. merged with Columbia Health Care in March 1994, creating the Tennessee-based Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation. Nurses said the change of ownership only worsened their frustrations. That spring, the unrecognized union held elections and selected officers.

Attempts by union representatives to meet with hospital management in December 1994 were rebuffed, sending the group to the National Labor Relations Board for recognition.

Perry said she believes the union is stronger than ever.

“We as nurses started this because we need to stand together,” she said. “With big business and HMOs taking over the hospitals, we need to stand together. We are the ones by the patients’ bedsides, we are on the front line of patient care. We are the ones with patients’ lives in our hands.”