NLRB Sets Date for Nurses Election at South Shore Hospital 
For Union Representation by Massachusetts Nurses Association

 The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has finally set a date for an election for the 850 registered nurses of South Shore Hospital.  Last week, MNA organizers and hospital management agreed to terms for a secret ballot election to be held at the hospital on Jan. 5, 2001.  

In August, a majority of the nurses at the hospital signed an open petition calling for recognition of the MNA as their collective bargaining agent.    After the hospital refused to grant voluntary recognition of the bargaining unit, the nurses filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking an election.  In September, more than 15 days of hearings were held before the NLRB in Boston to determine who would be eligible for representation by the MNA.

The nurses were seeking an election for a bargaining unit comprising the 850 nurses at South Shore Hospital, which were the only nurses engaged in the organizing drive by the MNA.  The hospital, in an attempt to stall the election and compromise its success, has argued that the election should include the nurses who work at the South Shore VNA, a home care agency affiliated with the hospital.  The MNA has argued that these nurses did not seek union representation by the MNA at this time and, therefore, should not be included in this election.  The NLRB agreed with the MNA and called for an election of the nurses proposed by the MNA.  

“It took a long time, but now we will finally have the opportunity to vote for our union,” said Diane Brady, a nurse on one of the hospital’s medical/surgical floors.  “The nurses at South Shore Hospital are seeking to form a union to have a voice in all decisions that affect our practice and the care of our patients.”

The MNA, which represents more than 18,000 nurses working in more than 80 health care facilities in Massachusetts, represents nurses at nearly every hospital on the South Shore including Brockton Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center of Brockton, Quincy Medical Center, Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, Morton Hospital in Taunton, Falmouth Hospital and Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. 

Brady, along with others leading the organizing campaign at South Shore Hospital, has experienced working in an MNA-represented facility before working at South Shore.  Kathy Spurr, a maternity nurse who previously worked at New England Medical Center, stated, “We were always able to work things out, there was a real give and take between nurses and management, and we never had to beg for what we needed.  It wasn’t until I began working in a non-union hospital that I realized how much we don’t have and how important it is to have a union voice.”

For nurse Debbie Irwin, a union is a mechanism for protecting herself as well as her patients in the wake of the growing nursing shortage.  “With the nursing shortage happening, we as nurses no longer can be just patient advocates. We have to be nurse advocates.  By being part of a union, we will have the voice to do both, ” Irwin said.

In its campaign to educate the South Shore nurses of what can be accomplished through union representation, the MNA plans to mail each nurse at the facility information from a joint press release issued by MNA nurses at Valley Regional Hospital in New Hampshire (the most recent group of nurses to organizer with the MNA) and the managers of that facility.  The information concerns the ratification this month of the nurses’ first contract since organizing their union.  The contract includes landmark protections including a prohibition of mandatory overtime, a process for establishing safe staffing levels on all hospital floors, seniority rights, a 12-step pay scale, improved pension benefits and, for the first time ever in an MNA contract, specific contractual guidelines for proper orientation of nurses whenever they are assigned to an unfamiliar unit in the facility.  

Said Brady, “We have seen what unions can do, we have seen how nurses at other MNA facilities have mechanisms in place to address concerns about staffing and professional issues.  On January 5th, we have the opportunity to win that right for ourselves.”