1414670674_eeff295a3f.jpgThe SEIU is trying to unionize workers in Boston’s teaching hospitals, and the Boston City Councilor is considering asking hospital CEOs to sign a “free and fair election agreement.” It would ask them not to compromise care by trying to intimidate workers, taking them away from patient duties and forcing them to listen to a bunch of anti-union propaganda on the clock or redirecting patient care money for that purpose.

The hospitals are pooh-pooing the idea as unnecessary, because the NLRB provides for fair elections already.

Uh-huh.

Let’s take a short trip back to Nevada nurse’s lockout last year, via Taylor Marsh:

Enter Brent Yessin and Brent Yessin & Associates. He’s also a former Vice President of the Burke Group, an anti-union firm. People at these anti-union firms are sometimes called “persuaders.” Quaint, isn’t it. In California, these “persuaders” have been used repeatedly to undermine the California Nurses Association. In California, nurses are made to attend mandatory meetings where they are lectured by these “persuaders,” whose fees range from $118 – $210 per hour, with expenses going into the millions for these anti-union campaigns. Mr. Yessin has earned quite a reputation. He’s a master of anti-union campaigns.

It had been brewing for years. Notorious union-busting consultant Brent Yessin was hired by VHS in January 2006, when the two hospitals’ contracts with nurses gave up, but the union says agreements were made in the summer of 2005 to bring him in. In September of that year, 39 nurses at Desert Springs made news when they were suspended from work for wearing SEIU pins on their uniforms. In 2003, Desert Springs tried without success to rid themselves of the union, and in 1999, when SEIU was defying the medical field’s historical resistance to unions, they and Valley led an unsuccessful charge to keep unions out of hospitals.

A refusal to sign the agreement is tantamount to an admission that the hospitals are willing to compromise patient care in the name of profit.

Not that this is novel, but still, the “unnecessary” argument is entirely specious.

There’s an SEIU rally in Boston on October 16. More info here.

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