Nurses Vote for Union

Organized labor scored a major victory Friday as nurses at the West’s largest hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, voted to join the California Nurses Assn.

The vote, according to the union, was 695 in favor and 627 against in balloting that began Wednesday and concluded Friday night.The effort to organize 1,511 nurses at Cedars-Sinai was rancorous, with union supporters and opponents accusing one another of deceptions and intimidation.

It was a high-stakes fight: The union already represents 45,000 of the more than 150,000 registered nurses in the state and a majority of those in Northern California. It is now targeting Southern California, where victories at large hospitals such as Cedars-Sinai in West Los Angeles are of strategic importance.

Friday’s victory will help union organizers convince nurses at other hospitals to support unionization, said Rose Ann DeMoro, the union’s executive director.

“We’re now going to see a wave of organizing through Southern California,” she said.

Nurses at the West’s second-largest hospital, Long Beach Memorial, joined the union in November 2001. On Sunday, the union signed an agreement raising pay for those nurses an average of 21% over three years and improving retirement benefits.

DeMoro said the win at Cedars-Sinai was especially significant because the hospital’s opposition campaign “was one of the most vicious I’ve seen.”

The union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the hospital interrogated nurses about the union drive, conducted surveillance of nurses and threatened to fire employees backing the union, all in violation of labor laws. The hospital says the allegations are without merit. Nurses at Cedars-Sinai who supported unionization said they sought better pay, retirement benefits and working conditions. Cedars-Sinai had argued that a union was not needed because management has been responsive to nurses’ needs. Hospital officials note than nurses’ salaries increased 5% this year, with an additional 5% increase for nurses with at least 20 years’ experience. The hospital says that it also absorbed a 25% increase in health insurance costs.

As part of its campaign against the union, the hospital argued that nurses should be represented by a professional organization rather than a union. That argument was appealing to many. Betty Nersesian, a nurse who has worked at the hospital for 25 years, said a union would degrade nurses’ professional standing.

“I really didn’t go to school to hold a stick and walk a picket line,” she said.

But Eva Buenconsejo, a Cedars-Sinai nurse for 20 years, said a union is necessary to give nurses the power to negotiate with management.

“I felt our voices were not heard before. We need a unified voice through collective bargaining,” she said at nearby restaurant where nurses gathered late Friday to celebrate.

Aileen Drilon, another union supporter, said she understands the union may not be able to win everything she and other nurses want from the hospital.

“Our eyes our open,” she said.

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Times staff writer Charles Ornstein contributed to this report