Discussion Post #8
Topic: The setting is a 100-bed nursing home facility which employs about 135 employees and none of them are currently unionized. About one quarter of these employees are either administrators or supervisors and cannot be unionized. There has been significant turnover in leadership at the facility in recent years which has resulted in changing rules and procedures for all staff. Management staff that has remained thinks that they have done everything they can to keep employees happy. They even held a company barbeque last summer for everyone. They say that their hands are tied because the revenue streams for the facility have decreased because of cutbacks in reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, and private payers are also starting to negotiate lower rates. The nurses are increasingly being asked to work double shifts and patient care is starting to suffer. Wage increases have been non-existent or minimal. Supervisors appear to be ill-trained and are grouchy with everyone. The free bus passes employees used to get as a benefit have been revoked. One of the nursing staff decided she was fed up and is now trying to organize her colleagues under a union.
Original Post You are a health care administrator within the facility. You are informed by one of your supervisors that this nurse is attempting to organize employees into a union. Assume that you are opposed to this action, what kind of LEGAL steps would you take to try to discourage the formation of a union or to show that it really isn’t needed? (Note that you will have had to follow the instructions in the learning module for this week, which required you to “jump to” the NLRB website to successfully respond to this question).
Response Post Respond to one of your classmate’s post from the perspective of the nurse union organizer. Describe why such working conditions are a problem for you and why starting a union is the best solution to those problems.
Sources: To receive full credit, you must cite at least one academic or government source to support your position in your original thought post. Please do not cite your book – this assignment requires you to do additional work. The following websites are not appropriate academic citations: Wikipedia.com; Ehow.com; Ask.com; About.com or anything in the same genre.
