HILLSBOROUGH - Last Thursday, the lawyers for the International Union of Operating Engineers and Duke University Health System scheduled a unionization vote for early June and decided which nurses will be allowed to participate.
With about a dozen nurses in attendance and in front of a National Labor Relations Board representative, the lawyers from IUOE and DUHS agreed to allow all registered nurses on Duke's main campus to vote on whether to join a union.
Mike Israel, CEO of Duke Hospital, said the filed petition mainly addressed issues at Duke, so nurses at Durham Regional and Raleigh Community hospitals should not be included in the June vote. IUOE lawyer Seth Cohen said the agreement approved 37 separate classifications of nurses for voting and removed the names of supervisors one by one.
Union supporters collected around 1,000 signatures to force the vote, which is scheduled for June 2 and 3. Previous estimates suggested that 1,400 nurses would participate in the vote, but the final list, which will be released Thursday, is expected to include about 2,000 names, hinting at a closely contested vote.
If the nurses elect to join a union, DUHS will have to bargain with the nurses' union in good faith. If the nurses elect not to join a union, they cannot attempt to unionize for a full year.
Israel said the hospital's position is, and has always been, that everyone should be informed and should vote.
"An ideal situation would be to have a 100 percent turnout," he said. "It's everybody's responsibility to vote and understand what they're voting for or against."
Israel explained that although North Carolina is a right-to-work state, those whose jobs are covered by a bargaining agreement will also be affected. "Anyone who could potentially be covered by the collective bargaining process as a result of an election should have a right to vote in that election," said Israel. "[This agreement] does that."
Connie Donahue, a nurse at Duke Hospital, expressed a common sentiment among union supporters. "I love the hospital and my work, but on some nights, the nurse to patient ratio reaches one to eight," she said, reiterating that unionization is about patients, not money. Many nurses feel that a normal nurse-to-patient ratio is one to three, a level that many say existed at the hospital five years ago.
But Israel also reiterated that collective bargaining will not address the vast majority of concerns he hears from the nurses. "We are experiencing the same problems [other health care institutions are having], and regardless of how this comes out we'll have to work directly with our front-line staff to resolve them," he said.
The movement to unionize started in August 1999 when a past IUOE president was treated at Duke Hospital. Hearing the nurses talk about their working conditions, he suggested the possibility of forming or joining a union. Spread mostly by word of mouth and night-time meetings at local hotels, the movement has now received the support of roughly 1,000 nurses, joined under the banner of NUPA-Nurses United for Patient Advocacy. IUOE currently has 400,000 members across the nation and Canada.
"We're making history here," said one nurse, referring to the fact that North Carolina has never had a nurses' union at a private hospital.
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