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Unions Will Fight Ruling on Nurse Supervisors
An October decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) threatens to strip nurses and possibly millions of other workers of their right to union protections. The unfavorable ruling on a group of cases, known together as Kentucky River, had been expected because a majority of the board members are Bush administration appointees.
The decision says employers can label workers as supervisors if they assign another employee to a particular location, to work at a certain time or to perform a significant task. They also may be called supervisors if they’re held accountable for the tasks they assign.
“The NLRB’s test for determining who is a supervisor is a stretch at best and a threat to safe working conditions at worst,” AFT president Edward J. McElroy says.
The main case, Oakwood Healthcare Inc., was decided on a 3-2 vote. It says permanent “charge” nurses are bosses under the National Labor Relations Act, while rotating charge nurses may not be. The AFT represents 70,000 health professionals.
McElroy pointed out that denying union protection to nurses could exacerbate the already serious nationwide nurse shortage, which has resulted in dangerous nurse-to-patient staffing ratios and increasing demands for exhausting and potentially harmful mandatory overtime.
“Today’s decision threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees,” wrote the two dissenting NRLB members, Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh. “In that category fall most professionals.”
The dissenters said that by 2012, the number of U.S. professionals who might be called bosses could number almost
34 million, approaching a quarter of the workforce. The Economic Policy Institute says up to 8 million workers could be affected right now.
The new rules in Oakwood will be challenged and may end up back at the U.S. Supreme Court.
AFT Campaign Puts Focus on Crumbling Schools
The AFT is launching a new school infrastructure campaign that will officially kick off this fall. The first phase will include a report on the physical condition of public schools in the country, which are plagued by everything from mold and poor indoor air quality to overcrowding and inadequate lighting. In addition to providing unhealthful environments for children as well as adults, those school conditions have a direct impact on students’ ability to learn.As part of the initiative, the AFT asked members to send in pictures of substandard conditions in their own work sites. A couple of those examples are shown above.
In addition to the main report, the campaign will include a resource guide for affiliates. School staff—and especially support staff who perform much of the vital maintenance—often have been overlooked in the process of planning, building and monitoring school construction and renovation projects. The aim is to get more union involvement up front, which can help avoid some of the physical problems that have arisen even with new and very expensive school construction projects.
The campaign also will be linked to existing AFT initiatives, such as the Activists for Congressional Education (ACE) program and the AFT e-activist network.
Watch for more on the infrastructure campaign in future issues of the Reporter.
AFT’s PSRP Policy Council Welcomes New Members
The AFT’s PSRP Program and Policy Council welcomed nine new members from around the country at its October meeting in Washington, D.C. The 27-member council meets three times a year to discuss issues that affect the entire range of PSRP jobs and recommend policies and projects for the AFT to pursue.
The newest council members are Frank Caul from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers; Robert Chacanaca, president of the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Council of Classified Employees; June Davis, field representative for the Chicago Teachers Union; Jackie Ervolina, chair of the United Federation of Teachers (New York City) secretaries chapter; Felecia Hampshire, president of the Clay (Fla.) Education Support Personnel Association; Laura Harper, PSRP chapter chair of the Jefferson Parish (La.) Federation of Teachers; Becky Hespen, president of Education Minnesota Osseo Education Support Professionals; Malinda McKee, vice president for support staff of Alliance AFT (Dallas); and Luukia Smith, president of the El Camino (Calif.) Council of Classified Employees.
