Contra Costa Times, October 5, 2006

Union members say they will fight if employers try to enforce decision that strips labor rights from some

Leaders of unionized nurses in the Bay Area and elsewhere in California vowed Wednesday to strike rather than capitulate if hospitals seek to enforce a federal ruling that nurses who have minor duties as supervisors could be designated managers and no longer be able to participate in a union.

The National Labor Relations Board determined that charge nurses who during their shift assign nurses to work with patients were acting as supervisors. Because they were considered supervisors, the charge nurses were no longer in the union and not covered by federal labor protections.

The 3-2 ruling by the board could apply to a broad range of industries, not just health care workers, Ken Jacobs, chairman of UC Berkeley's Center for Labor Economics, said Wednesday.

"This potentially has a significant impact on unions in many sectors around the country," Jacobs said. "It opens up a whole can of worms. We have heard, for instance, that this could be applied to retail workers." Retail employees often work shifts in which one rank-and-file employee assigns tasks to others at a store.

The ruling, though, immediately irked union officials representing nurses in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

"We will strike any employer that tries to exploit this ruling," said Charles Idelson, a spokesman for the Oakland-based California Nurses Association.

The CNA has accumulated "tens of thousands of signed strike pledges" from its members if an employer such as a hospital attempts to enforce the NLRB ruling, Idelson said.

Kaiser Permanente does not intend to apply the ruling to its unionized employees, officials with the Oakland-based health care provider said. Kaiser recently fashioned a labor agreement with its unions, said Julie Petrini, senior vice president of operations with Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

"Our relationships with labor are very important to us," Petrini said. "It's more than just an existing bargaining agreement. We really want to be the employer of choice for nurses." Hospitals across the country have scrambled to cope with a shortage of nurses in recent years.

One analyst said it is understandable that hospitals and employers in other industries may attempt to apply the ruling to their own operations, despite the potential for labor unrest.

"Hospitals are forced to operate under so many rules and staffing ratios," said Anthony Archie, research fellow with the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute, a think tank.

The complexities have intensified pressure on hospitals to find ways to operate efficiently so they can control costs, he said.

"That is why hospitals are always looking at the most flexibility on how to move their supply of nurses around to meet the patient load," Archie said.

The financial pressures on hospitals mean management and unions should find ways to cooperate rather than confront, Archie said.

The ruling's full impact was not known because individual employers can apply it on a case-by-case basis.

Nevertheless, union leaders said they had plenty of concerns about how the NLRB ruling might be applied in practice.

"We think it has implications for professional workers in industries beyond health care," said Chloe Osmer, an official with the Oakland-based California Labor Federation. "This really applies to any worker who has supervisory duties. And it applies even though they cannot hire or fire anybody."

The nurses union is concerned that some employers may attempt to quietly chip away at bargaining units by implementing the rules gradually.

"They may start to redesign jobs so that registered nurses gain responsibilities that the employer may think qualifies the nurses to be ineligible for being in the union," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association. "A nurse could be designated a supervisor if a nurse asks other nurses to help her with a patient."

Nurses could become tangled in a Catch-22, DeMoro warned.

"If the nurse uses independent judgment to treat a patient, the nurse becomes a supervisor and is no longer in the union," DeMoro said. "If the nurse does not exercise her judgment, the patient could suffer reduced treatment. It really becomes a slippery slope."

George Avalos covers the economy, jobs, financial markets, insurance and banks. Reach him at 925-977-8477 or gavalos@cctimes.com.