The nurse’s of Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia just got the news — they won in their election fight against the California Nurses Association (C.N.A.)! The vote count was 309 RNs against to 267 RNs in favor of unionization.

I wonder how the C.N.A. and their supporters will spin this election loss. No doubt they’ll issue a press release touting the narrow loss and I’m sure the press will parrot this statement. Just like when the C.N.A. won the vote at Cy-Fair in Houston by a margin of 8 (now that was a slim victory), but the C.N.A. touted the vote as though it was a resounding victory for nurses across Texas. So if we use their own reasoning then we can only conclude that if an 8-vote margin is a resounding win; then a 42-vote margin is one major whooping on behalf of the nurses in their rejection of the C.N.A. Maybe the Pennsylvania nurses might’ve been more receptive to the idea a nursing union if it had been a local nursing union that was courting their vote and not the carpet bagging C.N.A. and their well-known bullying tactics that was courting them?

To put things into perspective for folks, the nurses that weren’t keen on a nursing union had a very hard row to hoe. Like in Houston they found that their hospital and nursing management were in essence prohibited from offering them assistance thanks to a so-called neutrality agreement (for more one this agreement see “Like Thieves in the Night”) that had been signed between Tenet and the C.N.A. The agreement gave all the cards to the C.N.A. and their representatives to spread their message, but withheld equal support for the nurses that wanted to get their counter-message out. Things were so blatantly unfair that the NLRB actually intervened on behalf of the No to the C.N.A. nurses and granted these nurses a couple concessions: such as a meeting room that was somewhere in the “bowels” of the hospital so that only the most stalwart of nurses could find the meeting room and of course finally a table in the cafeteria. Throughout the process nurses, such as Nurse Hummel were stalked, photographed, and pilloried by the C.N.A. representatives. The C.N.A. pulled out all the stops even going so far as to paying for a pro-C.N.A. nurse from Cy-Fair hospital to come out and make the rounds through the hospital and producing a flyer depicting Hahnemann nurses attending a big pro-union rally in DC organized by the C.N.A. The only problem with the flyer was that the nurses pictured from Hahnemann Hospital never attended that event and had been plucked out of another photograph and pasted into this C.N.A. propaganda material. Nurse Hummel even made sure to invite the C.N.A. to attend a debate so that interested nurses could have an open discussion, but the C.N.A. was a no-show, which seems to be par for the course when it comes to dealing with the C.N.A.

I think that the C.N.A. finally met their match when RNs from several other states came out to offer their support, expertise and knowledge with those who simply wanted to be able to have their side of the story heard. I know that several nurses came out on their own dime and time; and as one of those nurses, I found the time I spent at Hahnemann enlightening and enjoyable. I was both pleased and honored to have met with not only Nurse Hummel (after so many telephone conversations) and the countless other RNs that came to our table or met us in the hallways and meeting rooms to share their story and to give me an opportunity to answer their questions.

So hats off to all the nurses (both anti & pro nursing union) of Hahnemann who turned out to vote (from what I’ve been told about 592 eligible nurses voted) that means nearly 60% of the eligible nurses voted in this election. I can only hope that the media fairly reports the outcome of the election and assuming that they even chose to report the vote outcome. For more information I invite you to visit the Hahnemann nurses website at: http://www.thepronurse.com/