Labor & Employment Law

1,900 Texas RN?s Vote to Join NNU Affiliate

By Mike Hall

More than 1,900 registered nurses at five Texas hospitals have voted to join National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas (NNOC-Texas), an affiliate of the 155,000-member National Nurses United (NNU).

The election wins by the nurses took place during the past two weeks, with the latest victory coming last night at the Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville. They join the registered nurses who voted for a voice at work at four other HCA hospitals: Corpus Christi Medical Center in Corpus Christi, Del Sol Medical Center and Las Palmas Medical Center in El Paso, Rio Grande Regional Hospital in McAllen.

NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro calls the wins in a predominantly non-union state, an “historic moment for nurses and patients in Texas and the nation.”

The Texas RNs have broken through in achieving collective action and representation in Texas and opened a door that will never be closed.

Only one private hospital in Texas has been previously unionized, Cypress Fairbanks in Houston, also a NNOC-Texas/NNU facility.

DeMoro also says the Texas nurses’ decision to join the union shows their commitment to improving patient care in a health care system too often puts profits before patients.

RNs are the canaries in the mines in our healthcare system, the most independent, honest brokers for patients, based on their very real-life experience fighting to protect patients at the bedside and to change the healthcare system for all patients and future patients.

NNU Organizing Director David Johnson says the key issues for the Texas nurses at all the hospitals– improved ability to advocate for patients, enhanced safe staffing and upgraded standards for nurses–are “common themes for nurses everywhere.”

Monica Sanchez, an RN at Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, puts it this way:

With NNOC-Texas/NNU our voice will be heard so that we will have the power of collective bargaining rights to protect our profession and our patients.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 04, 2010 (boomark / email).