Tenet Healthcare and the California Nurses Association squelched free speech rights when Tenet succumbed to CNA pressure and signed what it called an Election Procedures Agreement (EPA). In so doing, Tenet agreed to allow CNA organizers preferential access to Tenet facilities, and gagged nurses from speaking out against the union.
Thankfully, attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation represented nurses from Philadelphia and Houston Tenet facilities, and an appeal filed by the attorneys challenging the EPA was partly sustained by the NLRB’s General Counsel.
“CNA bosses shouldn’t be empowered to negotiate on behalf of workers they don’t even represent,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Tenet Corporation and CNA operatives have stacked the deck in favor of union organizers, stifling independent-minded employees in an attempt to push Houston and Philadelphia nurses under union boss control, like it or not.”
The practice of “negotiating” these type of agreements represent one of the more anti-worker practices in the labor movement, and should be outlawed.
Not only is this an injustice to the nurses who lose their say, Unions that successfully negotiate these agreements from companies and hospitals like Tenet did just that…they negotiated them. More specifically, they probably (secretly) conceded something TO Tenet that they control, like wages, benefits, or favorable work conditions currently enjoyed by represented employees, all in exchange for the neutrality agreement.
You don’t think a hospital like Tenet does this because the don’t know any better, do you?