By Jack Katzanek, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Jul. 29–Nurses at Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar will vote a second time on whether they want to decertify their union after a judge threw out the first election because of the hospital’s intimidating tactics.
The vote on whether to keep the California Nurses Association will be Aug. 27 and 28, said James Small, regional director for Region 21 of the National Labor Relations Board. If the nurses vote to decertify the union at the Wildomar hospital, it would end almost five years of legal disputes between the two sides.
Nurses voted to drop the union affiliation in November 2006 by a 129-101 vote. But the nurses union filed an objection, claiming hospital managers and the consultants they hired violated numerous federal labor laws.
After a six-day hearing, Administrative Law Judge Gerald A. Wachnov agreed.
Small said nurses will be officially reminded about the 2006 election when they vote next month.
“Notices will point out that this election is being conducted as a result of the employer’s unfair labor practices and objectionable conduct,” Small said. “It will be on the notice, and the employees will be able to draw their own conclusions.”
The hearing on the 2006 election was held late last year in Riverside and Murrieta, and Wachnov, in a decision released in March, upheld most of the union’s objections.
They claimed hospital managers and representatives of Yessin & Associates, a Tampa, Fla.-based consulting firm the hospital hired, coerced and intimidated nurses before the vote and, in some instances, conducted surveillance while at work.
Hospital managers also denied nurses the right to wear pro-union logos on their scrubs and unlawfully confiscated CNA literature from nurses, according to federal documents.
Small said the hospital had a right to file an objection to the judge’s opinion but did not. The hospital is owned by Universal Health Systems, based in King of Prussia, Pa.
The nurses union first made efforts to unionize the hospital in late 2003. The nurses voted to join CNA by a 129-84 vote in May 2004.
But more than two years later, with the two sides stalemated in efforts to reach a first contract, the nurses voted to decertify.
Neither representatives of the hospital or the union returned calls seeking contact Tuesday.
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