The number of unionized healthcare workers in Florida has risen by almost a third in the last year according to The Florida Times-Union. Most of that growth has been in Hospital Corporation of America facilities that signed neutrality agreements with the major healthcare unions last year. “From a hospital’s viewpoint, unions can divide the workplace, restrict management’s ability to make decisions and cut profits’, said Miami lawyer Bob Norton, who helps hospital administrators fight unions. ‘Look at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where employees are members of 1991 SEIU’, he said. ‘The hospital is plagued by administrative problems and $500 million in debt. You’ve got union people constantly going around and contesting the decisions made by their supervisors,’ he said. ‘What that has done in terms of damage to the hospital is probably beyond repair.’”
