Oregon local expands its ranks with card check

Using their card check agreement, optical laboratory technicians at Kaiser Permanente Northwest voted unanimously on Nov. 29 to join the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP).

Negotiations to incorporate the optical lab techs into the OFNHP technical contract got under way in January.

The OFNHP bargaining team will tackle a number of issues for the techs, including giving them a voice in the direction of the optical lab and catching up their compensation with the members of the technical bargaining unit. 

Member organizers Angie Robinson, optical steward at Kaiser Salmon Creek, and Esther Haberman, president of the OFNHP technical bargaining unit, worked persistently to help the workers form their union and win a strong voice in the workplace.

Under current federal law, private-sector employers may recognize a union if a majority of employees demonstrate that they wish to be represented by a union—usually by signing a card, petition or other form designating the union as their collective bargaining representative.

Card check agreements are preferable to organizing under the federal National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) because they help avoid extensive, time-consuming litigation and anti-union campaigns.

In 1997, Kaiser Permanente and 26 of the unions that represent Kaiser employees agreed to the Kaiser Labor-Management Partnership, an agreement that, among other things, requires Kaiser Permanente to remain neutral in a union organizing campaign and to recognize new bargaining units via the card check process.

OFNHP expanded its membership from just over 1,400 in 1997 to more than 2,500 members today through the labor-management card check process.