More than 50 nurses from several AFL-CIO unions packed a House of Representatives hearing room on Tuesday to demand their rights be protected.
They were there to hear witnesses, including one of their colleagues, set a congressional panel straight about a series of decisions last year by the Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Oakwood Healthcare and two other cases.
In the wake of these NLRB decisions, millions of nurses and other skilled and professional workers could be reclassified as supervisors and thereby lose their freedom to form a union.
The hearing by the House Health, Employment, Labor and Pension Subcommittee focused on the RESPECT Act (H.R. 1644).
This bill would dispel confusion created by the Oakwood decisions and clarify that skilled and professional workers should not be classified as supervisors, who are denied collective bargaining rights under the law, merely because they have minor supervisory duties or provide some direction to less-skilled employees.
A former NLRB member and a New Jersey hospital’s legal counsel also testified in favour of the bipartisan Re-empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradesworkers (RESPECT) Act, which has been introduced by Reps. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) and Don Young (R-Alaska).
Nurses attending the hearing are part of AFL-CIO’s new RNs Working Together industrial coordinating committee, made up of 10 AFL-CIO unions – including United American Nurses (UAN), AFSCME, AFT and the Steelworkers (USW) – that together represent more than 200,000 nurses.
Five years ago, registered nurse Lori Gay and some 150 other RNs at the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center in Salt Lake City voted to join the UAN. But their vote and dozens of others never have been counted because the hospital claimed two-thirds of the nurses were supervisors and ineligible to join a union.
Gay testified at the hearing: ‘For five years, our ballots have remained impounded while we have waited for clarification on what it means to be a supervisor.
‘The ballot I cast in 2002 has never been opened and may never be counted. . . .
‘When the Oakwood decisions were released last year, the Washington, D.C., NLRB remanded our case back to the regional director.
‘According to the regional director’s decision, 64 out of 153 nurses at the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center in 2002 were supervisors, including myself.’
The NLRB’s radical new interpretation of the term ‘supervisor’ – which the bill would nullify – essentially enables employers to make a supervisor out of a worker who assigns other employees overall tasks such as restocking shelves, or directs other employees to perform individual tasks such as changing a catheter (if the worker’s supervisory authority requires independent judgment).
The board ruled that workers can be classified as supervisors if they have supervisory authority for as little as 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their time on a regular basis.
That breaks down to less than an hour a day or one full shift every two weeks.
At the Salt Lake City hospital, the ruling that 64 charge nurses were supervisors was ‘absurd’, Gay testified: ‘All the RNs in the neonatal intensive care unit were declared to be supervisors, essentially “supervising” each other on a rotating basis.
‘In the inpatient rehabilitation unit, ten of the twelve RNs were declared to be supervisors.
‘In the newborn nursery, ten of twelve RNs were also declared to be supervisors.
‘In the labor and delivery unit, the ratio of supervisors to nonsupervisory employees was twelve to five.
‘In the surgical unit, the ratio was ten to seven.’
William M Tambussi, labour counsel and negotiator at Cooper University Hospital in New Jersey, testified that nurses at Cooper must meet three criteria before being declared supervisors – involvement in setting compensation, hiring and firing and scheduling staff assignments on a weekly and monthly basis.
‘At Cooper University Hospital, charge nurses. . . are not considered supervisors or management employees. . .
‘Charge nurses at Cooper University Hospital do use independent judgment to assign and responsibly direct other nurses and technicians and licensed practical nurses with respect to patient care. . .’
The clarity achieved by the RESPECT Act reflects both the original intent of the National Labor Relations Act framers and everyone’s common sense and practical notions of who a supervisor is in the workplace.
Gay describes her duties as charge nurse – duties the NLRB regional director ruled make her a supervisor – as:
‘Basically, as a charge nurse, I am in charge of the pencil.
‘Typically, I spend 10 minutes at the end of my shift filling out an assignment sheet for the oncoming shift, making sure that every patient has a bed and a nurse.
‘I record the traffic in and out of the unit – it’s as simple as that.
‘I don’t have the authority to hire, fire, evaluate or promote other nurses, nor do I have the authority to discipline another nurse for not taking an assignment, or for doing an assignment poorly.’
Former NLRB member Sarah Fox testified the interpretation adopted by the NLRB in the Oakwood cases threatens:
‘to create a new class of workers who, in the words of the Oakwood dissent, have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees. . .
‘Clearly, it is time for Congress to step in and provide the clarity that is so desperately needed in this area.’
According to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
‘We need to get back to a common-sense test for determining who is a supervisor. When all the charge nurses in a hospital unit are declared to be supervisors, essentially supervising each other, you know something has gone terribly wrong.
‘The courts and the Bush NLRB have strayed far from what Congress intended by creating a new class of workers – supervisors in name only – who have no voice on the job and no ability to unite with co-workers seeking better wages, benefits and working conditions.’