The computers said, "No" but the people said, "Yes." That's how the union organizing drive at Cooper Hospital in Camden, N.J., ended last summer as nurses voted 370 to 269 to join the Health Professionals and Allied Employees/FNHP. A week before the election, management put "Vote No" on the nurses" computer screens--including those next to patient care areas where campaigning was not supposed to take place. Some nurses asked that the screen say simply, "Vote" but managers wouldn't go along. One enterprising nurse then created a screen saver that said "HPAE - Vote Yes," but that was taken down and "Vote No" stayed on the screens until the election, as if trying to hypnotize the nurses into following orders. It didn't work.

The victory at Cooper, one of the most prominent hospitals in southern New Jersey, was the latest in a string of organizing victories for HPAE. The union has grown from 5,000 members in 1996 to 8,000 today.

Last spring, 225 nurses at Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus, N.J., joined the union, followed in June by 50 technicians.

Cooper Hospital put on a maximum effort to block the nurses' effort to organize, hiring one of the leading union-busting firms in the country: Adams, Nash and Haskell. The union estimates that management spent $2 million in its unsuccessful effort.

Many nurses felt it was typical of management's patronizing attitude to think that the nurses would be swayed by seeing "No" on their computer screens. "It's like they think I don't have a mind of my own," says Jean Lucas, a nurse in the intermediate maternal care unit who was active in the organizing committee.

A few days before the election, management mailed every nurse an anti-union video containing remarks like "There are no such things as unfair labor acts. Actually, I think employees have more rights than employers."

The story of the new union at Cooper Hospital, like many in health care, goes back to the mid-1990s when administrators, in response to managed care cutbacks, started reducing staff. Perhaps if they had involved the staff in finding ways to cope with the hospital's financial problems, things could have been different. Instead, they assigned more patients to each nurse, cut safety margins and started pulling nurses from one department to another to make up for shortages. Lucas remembers one 12-hour shift when she worked in four different departments. "I barely had a chance to introduce myself to a patient before I was whisked away and pulled somewhere else," she says.

Laura Spath, an intensive care unit nurse, suddenly found herself pulled to neonatal intensive care one day. "How helpful was I? Not very. I fed babies. I know very little about the work they do there."

Finally last summer, Cooper nurses asked HPAE for help in forming a union. The organizing moved slowly and deliberately at first, with dozens of small meetings of just a few people so everyone had plenty of time to talk. In March, 325 nurses signed a "mission statement" explaining why they were forming a union. Two months later, the nurses gave the National Labor Relations Board union cards from a large majority of the nurses and asked for an election.

Management responded with a state-of-the-art union-busting campaign that included high-pressure one-on-one meetings between nurses and their supervisors, compulsory group sessions and mailings about the dangers of unions in addition to the "Vote No" screen and the video.

But the nurses' organizing committee had prepared for the onslaught. They had held more than 50 meetings with small groups of nurses where everyone had plenty of time to talk about hopes and fears and find out what it would mean to have a union. The union busters found these nurses were not easily intimidated.

"Cooper was a major victory," says HPAE president Ann Twomey. "It's one of the largest and most prestigious hospitals in New Jersey, providing critical care and trauma services for the entire state. The Cooper nurses overcame immense obstacles to organize. They will help us all be more effective in fighting for quality patient care."

Despite the union's strong winning margin, the hospital has refused to start bargaining and instead has appealed to the NLRB to overturn the election.

But the nurses have already elected a negotiating committee and conducted surveys to determine bargaining priorities. The pro-union nurses formed a committee to reach out to those on the other side. Several former opponents have gotten involved in the preparations for negotiations.

Jean Lucas says life at the hospital is already better. She says that there's less friction between departments because nurses know each other and understand each department's special problems. "Just the unionizing process has brought people together," she says. "There's a new camaraderie. I'm talking to people I never talked to in 17 years."