Nurses union to appeal labor board decision
The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency with jurisdication over labor litigation, has ruled against seven ICU nurses who claim to have been wrongly fired from their jobs at Valley Regional Medical Center in May.
The hospital, owned by Nashville-based Hospital Corporation of America, said it fired the nurses be-cause of their refusal to take on additional “charge nurse” duties. The nurses — and the union represent-ing them — argue that taking on additional duties would have taken them away from their ICU patients, potentially placing those patients in jeopardy. Charge nurses make clinical assignments for patients and staff on the floor and for code teams, which respond to cardiac emergencies. In ICU, each nurse is as-signed two patients.
The fired nurses are members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the state’s largest RN union and an affiliate of National Nurses United, the country’s largest RN union. NNOC-Texas filed an unfair labor practices complaint on behalf of the nurses with the regional NLRB office in Fort Worth, charging that the nurses were fired in retaliation for their union activities. NNOC-Texas also charged that the nurses were illegally denied union representation during investigatory interviews — representation guaranteed under what is known as Weingarten Rights.
Karleen George, lead labor representative for NNOC-TX, said the NRLB regional board’s decision would be appealed to the national board in Washington, while the complaint over Weingarten Rights has been deferred to arbitration. Valley Regional, for its part, filed its own papers with the NLRB, charging that the nurses’ refusal to accept additional assignments constituted an illegal work stoppage as defined by labor law. In health care, a union is required to give a hospital 10 days’ notice before any work stop-page or picketing. A decision from NRLB regarding Valley Regional’s complaint is still pending.
A statement from Valley Regional officials said the hospital “is dedicated to delivering safe, quality medical treatment and services to our community and will always act to ensure nothing interrupts the compassionate care our patients trust us to provide.” The statement emphasized the NLRB regional director’s decision that the hospital “lawfully terminated the nurses when they refused to perform the charge nurse assignment.”
NNOC-Texas, in a separate move, has filed a lawsuit against Valley Regional in state court. The litiga-tion centers around “hospitals’ obligation to respond to a report of unsafe care,” George said, noting that in Texas case law if a nurse is terminated within 60 days of reporting unsafe conditions at a hospital, the burden of proof is on the hospital to show that the nurse was not fired for making the report. NNOC-Texas provided to The Herald a report compiling 42 separate Assignment Despite Objection documents filed with Valley Regional management, plus oral reports from nurses, from November 2010 to May 2011. Nurses use ADO forms to alert hospital management that, in the nurse’s professional judgment, an as-signed patient load poses a risk to the safety of patients. Valley Regional said it had received formal notification of the lawsuit but declined further comment.
A drive to “decertify” or remove union representation from Valley Regional was “blocked” by the NLRB until the charges between the union and the hospital are resolved. Dorothy Boling, an RN at Valley Regional who has been leading the decertification charge, said the effort would begin anew as soon as possible. Sixty-six percent of the RNs at Valley Regional so far are in favor of decertification, she said.
“We’re moving on toward decertification,” Boling said.
