Inside Nursing Unions: Myths, Power, and How to Organize Safely
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Hi guys, welcome back to Friends and Enemas. My name's Lindsay and who do I have with me? Kylie Hamm. Hi, can you give them a little bit of an introduction of who you are, what you do, and why you're here? Yeah, my name's Kylie. I am a nurse at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati. I work in the emergency department and I am the president of the Registered Nurses Association. That's the nurses union at UCMCA.

We have just under 1,700 registered nurses in our union at the hospital. Awesome. And I did want to say one disclaimer. I am not speaking for the hospital workforce. Sure, sure. How did you... Did you grow up, like, hearing about unions, or were they pretty normal where you were? No, I grew up in Texas, and my very first job that I ever had actually was...

We had an entire half day dedicated to anti-union propaganda. We watched some pretty ridiculous videos about how scary unions are and stuff like that. So I did not. I'm from Oklahoma, so I feel the exact same. Whenever I first left my staff job, I actually went

to a travel assignment that had a strike going on. And I did work a strike, which is a big no-no once you start learning about unions. And obviously there's so many ways you can go with that. But I didn't know enough about it, mostly because of the anti-union propaganda that you just brought up. And when I would tell people that were from the West Coast or even some of the East Coast that, they were like, what do you mean? That doesn't even make any sense how...

you wouldn't know how they properly work. I'm like, oh, it makes a lot of sense if you're from somewhere like where we're from. Yeah, right, to work. Yep. Yep. A big thing. Can you explain kind of what a union's purpose truly is?

Yeah, so a union's purpose is basically to give your collective a collective voice. So it's all of the nurses hopefully coming together. You're bargaining for the good of the majority. So that would be your rank and file union members.

And it's giving, so you have a lot more power when you are joined together than you do as an individual. Your chances of walking into your

administrator, HR, manager's office, whatever your setup is and asking for an 8% raise or a 14% raise, whatever the ask is and getting that as an individual is probably slim to zero. With a union, you have the bargaining power as a collective. So you have a lot more power.

That's really awesome. I think one of the first stories I heard about unions were pretty much nurses are going on strike, right? And what exactly do they typically bargain for besides higher pay? Because I think a lot of misconceptions are that we just want more money. Yeah, that's a big misconception. A lot of the things, so we bargain for things, obviously, besides high pay, which are still tied to things like benefits.

PTO, maternity leave, paternity leave. But then outside of your financial and kind of like benefit targeted bargains, we bargain for workplace safety. Safe staffing ratios is a big one right now. We bargain for just cause, like in a grievance process, some type of process where you have...

discipline that is coming down in a more fair manner where you're not just going straight to you're terminated or you're on a final warning. We bargain things like time and attendance. We don't really have a say in the policy, but we have a say in the way that they dole them out and things like when it comes to write-ups or points, again, whatever the system is where you work.

Yeah. So backing up a little because I kind of forgot to ask you, how long were you a nurse before you got into a union rep position? So I'm pretty new as a union rep. I was a nurse for a little right around 10 years, a little over 10 years. So very cool. So you definitely have a background in seeing what it looks like with and without a union. Yes. I so when we moved here from Texas, I had been a nurse for I think about two years and

And I did not know much about unions and I initially worked in pediatrics at a non-union facility. And after having multiple run-ins with just like really, you know, things that are supposed to work a certain way, but then you have managers that play favorites or

you climb your chain of command and then you reach the top and they're like, oh yeah, sorry, it's just the way we're doing it. And you have no way to fight against that. I went to a union hospital and I will, I love it. So.

Yeah, that's exactly how I felt too. Once I had left my staff job that didn't have a union and I started seeing how unions work. And yes, there are good unions and there are bad unions. That's what I hear anyway, which I've never experienced a bad union personally. But just like there's good and bad in everything. Could you tell us some of the goods versus or maybe there's some things to look out for with unions?

I only have, so I don't have a lot of experience with different unions. I think one of the things that you, I guess, would be on the lookout for is your level of engagement. So even when you win, once you win your union in a hospital, which is a whole process, you have to really, depending on where you work and the structure of your state, if you're right to work and all of these things, there's so many things that go into it.

You really have to keep fighting for engagement and things like that when that starts to fall. I mean your powers and union is your collective so like if you don't have if you start dropping engagement, and you don't have representatives and officers and board members that are working to keep that up you can really start to kind of backslide and have to make up that ground again. When I got elected

For the position I'm in now, we were definitely in a rebuilding phase as far as our engagement level and stuff. We're doing a good job on the upswing on that. We've done a lot of work around that, but it's always a process. It all ties to your contract campaigns and things like that. You finish a contract and sometimes unions can be prone to like, oh, we're done with this contract and they put too much time between getting ready for the next one.

Like pretty much as soon as you finish, you need to start like reengaging and getting ready to build the next one. So yeah, there was another contract I worked. It was like maybe a summer ago in Kansas and the hospital I was at just got a brand new union and some of the staff was for it and some of them were very against it. But yeah,

I didn't know, but they were about to strike there as well. Do you have any advice for staff that seem apprehensive or hostile towards other staff that are pro-union? Yeah, I think the best advice that I can give is to look

it how against, especially when you're in the process of unionizing, how against unions the hospital can be and how much money they will throw at keeping a union out. It is absolutely wild. And then they'll sit there and tell you like, we don't have any money. Like,

You're going to have things like mandatory overtime. You're going to be on call all the time. It's going to break the hospital. If unions were that bad, I don't think they would be successful anywhere. It's really about power and the hospital has...

all of it when you are not in a union. And once you unionize, they lose a piece of that and they don't want to give that up. So they want to stay in 100% control. And I think if you look at that and you look at how against it they can be, that should, in my opinion, that tells me everything I need to know. Like if they were so terrible, they wouldn't be so successful. Oh yeah. Unfortunately,

when you think about like the anti-union side, it's the shareholders, the CEOs, the top 10%. It's all of those people. It's all about capitalism. It's about all those things that have all the money and all the control and they don't want to give that up. So,

That, in my opinion, tells me everything I need to know about why unions are so important. Absolutely. Work that's done on the ground level is done by people that are working either for free or volunteering or working for very little paid hours. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it on the back end as well.

Something I had witnessed too was, you know, some of the staff ganging up on other members of the staff. For instance, this strike that happened at this hospital went through like it started maybe on a Tuesday. And so the hospital had a rule. If you strike, you can't come back to work for the rest of the week. Yeah.

And they use that against these nurses who are needing their paycheck. There was a young mother on this unit that could not go out and strike because she was a single income of three children. And then her staff members, her co-workers kind of turned against her. But I was like, it's not her, you guys. It's the hospital. Like, we all have the same boogeyman.

And I think that that happens a lot where we start pinpointing like, well, you should be doing this, but she, she literally can't. And the hospital knows that there's nurses like that. Absolutely. And that is not even just in the strike context. Like, um, I feel like some of the things that, that I deal with really frequently are, um, kind of like nurse on nurse misunderstandings or, you know, they come to the union with like, Oh, this nurse is bullying or they're toxic and it's,

They'll get upset and they're like, why isn't the union doing this or why aren't they doing that? But it's really about who's the actual problem. Your managers are allowing this behavior to happen. The hospital knows it's happening. They're not holding people accountable. We don't have the ability to discipline people. I feel sometimes people don't always...

fully understand that um we the union isn't disciplined people we don't hire and we don't fire we represent people there's a lot of really shady things that go on and a lot of things that like

The hospitals in general will try to get around. They are not there for the nurses or the staff. They are there to protect the hospital and to protect the money that's behind the hospital. The union, your union or a union, is there to protect the nurses or whatever...

entity they represent. In my case, we're fully registered nurses, so we represent all nurses for our hospital. And it's kind of, we've had multiple times where, you know, you have nurses that have been working for the hospital for years and years, and they've never had to use a union, they've never had to fall back on it, and they can be, they're not really anti-union, they just don't really

necessarily think it serves a purpose and then all of a sudden one day like something happens like they end up in a meeting with HR or whoever and they're just like wow like I'm so glad that you guys are there it's just it's one of those things that I hate to call it insurance because I think we do a lot more work than that I just don't think people always see it when it comes to the contracts and stuff like that the amount of protection that you have I know

When I was in Texas, I always give this example. We had a meeting, I want to say it was like in April maybe before summer, but most people already had their vacation scheduled and they pulled us into an all-staff meeting and they were like, we're short, we're not going to be like, we're not granting vacation, we're not doing this or that. The only, the top two senior nurses are going to get their vacation picks and if you have the points or the occurrences available, you

You can call off and people were very upset, but the end result was like, you don't like it and go work somewhere else. And that's how it works when you're not in a union. Whereas a union hospital would have nipped that. Like, I don't even think they would have tried it. At least not. Yeah. So it seems like it's just, it's someone to help protect you as a nurse and help protect your license and really your livelihood, your livelihood within work. It

It's making it a more comfortable, safe environment and overall non-toxic. Yeah. The other thing I'll say too, that I think a lot of people, there's a misconception around your CBA or your contract bargaining agreement. The hospital signs that too. Like they have agreed to that also. It's not just like the union came in and waving, you know, this contract around and slammed it down on the table. It's like, it is a long,

drawn out process to negotiation and at the end of the day everyone that's at that table signs it so they were also in agreement to it we're just um tend to be a lot more you know fanatic that's not the right word like a lot more hardcore about holding them accountable because it's oh yeah it's what it is that's what we're there for um but they have agreed to it too so

That's so interesting because, you know, like you say, holding them accountable for it, like from a travel nurse's point of view, when I have a contract with a hospital, I have to abide by my contract. But they really don't, even though they signed the contract too, there's not a lot I can do when they just cancel me or they just decide, no, we don't want you anymore. And it's like, I thought we both signed this contract, but clearly it feels very one-sided. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that's, again, another thing that comes into that collective voice and, like, that strength in numbers. And I know you had talked about striking. I think when it comes to misperceptions about...

unions and especially nurses unions that is a difficult choice for nurses that is not something that we take lightly that is not something that most people are gung-ho to do we don't want to walk away from our patients and as far as lockouts which is what you had mentioned so in our specific contract we have a we have to give a 10-day strike notice to vote on it it has to be a super majority so you have to have I think

I think it's like almost three quarters or more of your members have to agree to strike. It's not just, you know, half like your ratification vote. And then there's a no lockout policy. So if we strike, they cannot lock us out as long as we follow the contract. Oh, yeah.

We have not, to my knowledge, and I looked into this a little, our union has never had a strike as far as I know. And I looked back as far as I could where our contract's 52 years old. So we have not recently, at least since like the 90s that I know of, as far as I was able to look back, we had...

few very close calls. One of them was over parking actually. That was I think the closest we ever came. There was like some issues surrounding parking. I think there's like a dangerous area. Nurses, you know, were parking far away. They were walking in their cars. There's a lot of like issues with

people kind of getting harassed and they came, I want to say minutes away. They held the strike vote. They were ready to strike. And the story goes that one of the surgeons like busted in the door was just like losing his mind. And he was like, what do the nurses want? And they were like, they want parking. And he was like, give them parking. And that's how we got free parking. That's how we got our parking garage built for us. Yeah.

That's hilarious. I mean, and also it does show that sometimes if the story is true, which it probably is, doctors have a lot of say in the hospital. So it's really nice whenever they actually have our back because they know that we're a team and we have to work together. So if we are unsafe, their voices matter just as much as ours do. Yeah, I know. I love that story. And give

It was funny. Big surgeons was like, I'm not working with these scab nurses. What do they want? Like, just give them what they want. Yeah. Well, yeah, because, you know, being someone who worked a strike, which a lot of people get very angry at me, but I did not know any different. I really just thought it was I didn't understand it. I really didn't. I was very young.

But working in the conditions I did, I realized immediately how dangerous it was. There were nurses that lied on their resume saying that they were CRT certified or ECMO certified and were in the ICU. None of them are any of those. We have to scramble to find other nurses that might be certified

while giving out assignments, while some nurses choose just not to show up or they leave or there's so much angst and chaos that can happen during a strike. It's just not safe. But yet, like you said, the hospital signed a contract, but they're perfectly fine putting patients in harm's way to prove a point. And I'm like, what is that?

And it's wildly expensive for them, too. They pay a lot of money for strike nurses, a lot of money. And usually, I know, at least in that case, I was told the one with the parking garage, they're already there because we were, you know...

They said it was like within an hour of actually walking out at midnight whenever they finally settled. And so they've already gotten those nurses there. They already have to pay them for... Usually those contracts are pretty strict where they have to pay them for so many days before... Because they know that a lot of times the hospitals will settle, but it's still better for them to at least like...

settle the contract and be done but around unionizing there can be a lot of really nasty behavior I had helped a little been going to a few of the organizing meetings for some of the nurses in Dayton that are trying to organize right now in Miami Valley and they are like they're fighting like hell right now so we'll see what happens their hospital is

So not doing great. Yeah. I have a question. There's something I hear typically around strikes or union unionizing. If no strike nurses were to show up the hospital, like the hospital knows what day the strike is, but there's always this idea that, um,

you know, blaming scab nurses or nurses that go to strike saying like, if you didn't show up, they'd have to ship the patients out to another hospital. Is that really how that would go? Or do you think there will always be someone willing to take the contracts? You know what I mean?

Usually they will actually go ahead and ship out most of their sickest patients to other hospitals and they will try to get down to kind of bare bones prior to all of that. But I also think that there's always going to probably be nurses that will show up, whether how...

fit they are to take care of that population. Every hospital's population is so specific to that area, you know? You can go to different areas and you have different, um, kind of disease, I guess, diseases

not processes, but like your populations are different, you know, your level of care that you get is really different. And so each population can be so drastically different. I don't think that a lot of times the danger is like the nurses aren't prepared for that type of

Like our patients are sicker than people usually think they are. So I don't think they walk in and are like not expecting them to be as sick as they are. Yeah. And I'm interesting too, but we get a lot of, I mean, we're the only level one trauma center. So we get like all the traumas from the area. We're also a stroke facility. And I think we're currently, we're the only one. I think there's another one trying to get their certification. So we get a ton of strokes and,

And so as a, if coming in as a scab nurse and what you talked about, you know, lying or not being fully honest on your application, it presents a lot of dangers and the hospitals know that going in. That's why they, they also don't usually want to strike. So, yeah, yeah. They usually would rather settle most likely. Well, jumping into, um,

you know, some states don't have unions. If you're wanting to unionize at your hospital, what are the steps that someone should take? Because I have friends that have tried to like leave little flyers here and there, and they're very scared of retaliation, even if retaliation is illegal.

Yeah, and they should be, especially now with this administration and the NLRB that we have currently is just not union friendly. So it is a little bit scary. I don't think that that means it's not worth trying. It just means that you need to just be aware of that. And I think you also have to keep in mind that

As a nurse, you have the ability, for the most part, to get a job almost anywhere else. Like, if it's not... I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of losing your job or being retaliated against, but, like, you are going to easily find another job. I think it's worth it. So, the steps to unionizing are, first of all, going to be forming your organizing committee, which is...

Probably, if you have, like, talks or if you've tried in the past, if you have a state organization you can reach out to within your state, whether that's NNU. We have our state affiliate is Ohio Nurses Association. We are also affiliated with AFT, which has a healthcare segment in it. There's so many different unions. The Miami Valley nurses are unionizing through UAW, the auto workers, and

So it's really just about like finding a union, but the beginning steps of that is your organizing committee. So getting the word out and what you really need to do, depending on the size of your hospital, is you need some type of representation or some type of nurse in every single unit and

Preferably on every single shift to like really be able to get that word out. And the other thing, again, when you go back to your collective and your strength in numbers, the more people that you have joining your effort, the less likely you are to be retaliated against and the stronger your movement will get. It's really the initial kind of like getting it off the ground that's a little bit more scary.

once you kind of get your first organizing committee, whether you've gone through a union at that point or not, once you have like a

decent size you need to reach out to a union, you need to get some type of union involved and you really need to start I know some unions like hate this term but I don't really know what else to use, inoculating against the anti-union stuff that they're gonna start pushing out the second they hear about like anybody trying to unionize. So talking about oh they're gonna take your money, you're not gonna be able to talk to your manager

you're gonna, you know, like I said, have mandatory on-call or mandatory overtime or they're gonna make it where the hospital's gonna be so broke and all these other ridiculous things. Though a lot of times the big pushback is on dues

Which dues, I think, in my opinion, are more than reasonable. They go to running your union. And usually the bulk of that is going towards, like, arbitration and legal cases and stuff like that. And it's usually about two hours of work a month, approximately. So that's the typical dues for most unions. It can be a little more or a little less. I would say mine is probably, like, pretty close to that. And then...

Once you get to most unions will not actually do the cards, which is where you actually sign your unionization card demanding an election until you are at a super majority.

You only need 30% yeses to get an election, but you need 50% well, you need over 50% to win your union. So most good unions, that's a red flag. If they want to go ahead and have you do your election at 30%, that's concerning because you're going to have people that

say they vote one way and they won't or vice versa. So you really want to make sure you're more like 60 or 70% yeses before you're really like, okay, we're ready to hold our election. Um, and then once you win your union, um, it's very exciting, but then you start on the whole fight of like your contract. So it's all. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, very good to know because I think it I think it Confuses a lot of people like I don't think they realize they have to be the one to start it Like no one's going to come save you you have to be able to take the initiative to save your yourselves. Yeah Yeah, your union like union reps organizers and stuff. They'll give you they'll help you they'll support you They will get you in front of the NLRB. They'll give you all the rules and stuff but I think it's really important to point out that like if

In my opinion, and also my experience, you are, as a union leader or as a union, you are typically held more accountable than the hospital will ever be to following the rules and making sure that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. I mean, they will hire union-busting firms. They will spend millions of dollars on them. It's absolutely wild. They'll come in and hold meetings, and they'll start sending out propaganda and everything

They had... What was it? The nurses that were in Miami Valley were passing out flyers because they got...

told they couldn't pass them out in the break rooms, and so they were passing them out in the public entrance, and they were told if they stepped off the sidewalk, they were going to be arrested. They had, like, police standing there, like, waiting for them to, like, step off the sidewalk, and then they were told they couldn't stop any cars. Just, like, wild things. Meanwhile, the hospital has a whole firm inside, walking around, passing out all kinds of stuff, which is...

their right of the hospital, but it just kind of goes to show that like they are held to like a totally different standard. Oh yeah. They don't play fair. Yeah. It can be very frustrating, but, um, like I said, I definitely think it's, it is very worth it. No, they will never play fair. Yeah. I think the more I learned about hospitals too, is just at the end of the day, it's a business and it's business first. It's profit over patients. It's profit over people. And, um,

That was hard for me to realize as a new grad. I was like, no, that's not the fun, loving, caring environment I thought I was going into. But it's just the truth. And I feel like once you know it and you feel like you can change it, then that's more power for us, honestly. Yeah, they definitely are a profit driven business. And I think that is a lot of times what you see with newer nurses like that.

kind of, like, realization, like, oh, this isn't what I thought. And that's okay. Like, you still, but you still deserve to have a say. And you can change those things. Like, their unions are the, pretty much the only tool, the only effective tool that the working class has right now to change their working conditions. And you can see, based on the decline in unions during, like, the Reagan administration with the whole, um,

FAA, the air tower operators, whenever he shut that strike down in that decline of unionization, the gap between income inequality has just widened year after year after year. It's very, I mean, it's just, that's just...

fact. Like, with the decline of unions, the difference in income inequality has shifted significantly. So... That's interesting. And the other good thing about unions are, I don't know that people necessarily realize...

Even when you are not a union, like, if you are not in a union or your hospital is not a union, you do benefit from other hospitals and other unions. Because what they negotiate for and their wins do eventually pass on to other people. Like, I mean, if you think about...

Eight hour work days, FMLA, the weekends, all of these things, those were all won by unions years and years ago. And you benefit from all of those. Well, maybe not nurses, but you know. Yeah. Yeah. But that's interesting. Yeah. I do know what you're saying. And that's very interesting because I feel like a lot of people who are against unions, typically where I was growing up, some of my family that was filling my head with all these anti-union propaganda stuff, they

they worked nine to five jobs. So they're benefiting off of a union at some point who got them weekends, who got them, like you said, FMLA, is that what it's called? And other things that the typical workforce gets, but then like we're trying to do it and they're like, no, no, we want it too. Yeah.

Even the pay raises, I know for our area, a lot of times our union ends up reflecting, like, the pay raises of other hospitals in the area. So, like, when we negotiate and we get better pay raises, the other hospitals end up giving their employees pay raises because otherwise they're all going to leave and they're going to come and make more money. So you do benefit from other unions in their fight, even if you're not directly unionized. Yeah.

That's a really good point. My assistant put some notes on here about the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton that we were talking about and that there was a quote, when the hospital makes a decision to separate anyone's employment, it's not a decision that we make lightly because we have a goal to improve retention. Is that the hospital saying that or the union? That's the hospital. So a nurse there was handing out union flyers trying to let people

other people know that they were there was interest in forming a union and I'm saying this based on what I know from other nurses I don't work there so I can't say with 100% certainty but my understanding is that they fired her based on their non-solicitation or no solicitation policy which in all honesty is in direct violation with the NLRB but because of the

which is the National Labor Relations Board, sorry, in case anybody doesn't know that, that's the board that covers the NRA, which is the National Labor Relations Act.

And then they govern unions and deal with things like fair labor practices or unfair labor practices, stuff like that. But that policy is actually in direct conflict with the NLRB's policy. You have a right to organize, you have a right to discuss unions without retaliation, you have all of those things.

It's just that, unfortunately, because of the administration that we have right now and the ineffectiveness of the NLRB, it's just going to take a while to work through those claims. So that's an unfortunate part of it, but...

Yeah, and that goes back to, you know, people that are scared of retaliation. We're saying it's very real possibility that you could be retaliated against in any form, whether you lose your job or suspension or something. But it doesn't mean that there's not a way to get unionized. Absolutely. Absolutely. The best way to do it is...

To identify your leaders. So like leader identification is really important when you're unionizing. And the way that I kind of think about that is if I'm going to ask somebody...

My favorite people to ask are your new grads, new hires, things like that. I ask them, who do you go to when you have questions? Like, who, if you are not sure of a policy or something like that, who are you asking? Who do you trust? Who kind of like...

It's not always the people that you think it is. It's not always, like, your most popular. Like, some of those people can be problematic as far as, you know, bullying or kind of being considered leaving people out or whatever. You want your, like, more natural leaders and...

you do things called structure tests. So whether that be, like, we're having a meeting on Wednesday to talk about unionization and you think you, like, have somebody that likely is, like, identified as a natural leader, you would say, can you bring, like, two people to that meeting from your unit? And if they can do that, if they can deliver and, like, show up with two people, then they probably are, like, considered somebody that would be really good to go forward. And I would also say you never want to...

rule anybody out as just because they start off as anti-union doesn't mean that they always stay that way. It takes

one bad interaction from with them and management to kind of like go to the other side and those are not those are not infrequent a lot of times so yeah I could see them also it just takes them too you know yeah oh yeah I mean it's it's budget cuts it's um some units lose their bonuses um or it goes towards something else and that's what I witnessed at the last

hospital I was at that was forming a union was the conflict between management and staff was very high. Like you could feel the tension when you walk in the room, but it's because they felt like she left them high and dry, you know? And it's like, well, I see where they're coming from. Like,

If we could all team together, it would just be so much easier. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else you think that we should talk about today with unions? If someone's looking for a union or...

new to it. I would just say, so the best thing, especially if you're new to a union or you start somewhere that has a union and you're not familiar with that, ask questions and ask questions of both sides, especially if you're trying to form a union. It's okay to, to ask questions and I would get involved. So if,

Um, that's one thing that it sounds so cheesy and cliche, but when you are, when you are in a union or you're in a hospital that's unionized, like you're the union, your union is as strong as you are. So if you, if you just kind of,

I don't want to say complain. You're allowed to complain. But like do nothing to change it. Or you're unhappy with the way your union is running. But you're not really getting involved. You're not offering any suggestions. It's more...

It's honestly just complaining to complain. I know that structures are different everywhere. Some unions are a lot easier to get involved in. Some can be a little bit tougher, especially the ones that are very well established, very union proud, can be a lot more, I guess, difficult to kind of get into. That doesn't mean that should stop you. That should drive you even more. But like I said, I'm pretty new to unions now.

to being a union leader, union rep and feel very passionate about it. It has given me a lot of relief from being at the bedside so much and a lot of like burnout there. But I still feel like I'm not only supporting patients now, like I'm supporting all these nurses and I love it. Like the more and more

stuff that I see hospitals do and like the worst like they can get so nasty and just it's unreal the more gung-ho I am I've never been like more strongly or pro-union than now that I'm in a leadership role because I'm like damn they're like terrible

terrible. Yeah, you see all the background. Yeah, and I just don't think that people always see that. I didn't know that until I was, you know, sitting in these meetings and I'm like, God, you guys are awful. Like, how do you have a place? And there's a lot of

You know, and this is just, this is not my hospital. I'm talking on a, in America on the whole. Like, there's a lot of ageism in nursing. You know, nurses get older and they're not appreciated. There's a lot of bullying. There's, so racism is very rampant. Like, all of these things, there's, especially with the Medicaid cuts that are coming down, hospitals are making cuts to,

to patient care that can be very questionable unions push back against all of that like we have we do we don't just fight for pay that's probably the biggest misconception I didn't mean to ramble there I just I know all that's very good information I mean is there any are you able to tell us like what some of the shady things are or um there's so we and this is uh as far as

Like, I know in Miami... I'm not talking Miami-Dade, and I'm talking about in Florida. There were cuts to dialysis, so they... And I think it's happened across different states, but they cut it with patients that are immigrants. They have... They don't have legal status, so they cut them from three to two treatments a week, which they do to save money, and...

They quickly find out that not all of those patients tolerate that. The majority don't. That was one example. They ended up in, you know, ICUs. They ended up with crazy arrhythmias, super high potassium, like all of the things that dialysis flushes out of your system and keeps you healthy. And I think the point there is,

That's a life supporting treatment. Like they're cutting this and it's very cruel. They try to say that they're doing it with labs.

That's not the case because if it was, then... People spend so much time getting dialysis. If they could cut a treatment and spend two days versus three days sitting in that chair for hours at a time, don't you think that they would just do that? Wouldn't that be revolutionary in medicine, period? Right. So that's one example I can think of off the top of my head. Some of the other things that really bug me is...

When nurses have a change in something that's going on with their life, like something happens at home with one of their parents, they're getting older and they're having to provide care for them, something happens with one of their kids, something's going on in their marriage, and they have a very long track record of being extremely reliable on time, showing up, all these things, and all of a sudden they have this drop-off.

And managers are just yanking them into offices and writing them up for time and attendance instead of just, like, being a human being and talking to them and figuring out, like, hey, what's going on? Like, that's the kind of stuff that bothers me. Or writing somebody up on night shift for, like, nodding off, like...

I get it. They're not supposed to. Give me a break. You were 9 to 5. You sit there at 4 o'clock in the morning in the witching hour in front of a computer when you have one night where it's not completely wild and tell me you're not nodding off. I just feel like there's ways to approach it where you can treat people like humans and not just go to termination. I've seen our union address many of those things.

That's cool. Yeah, that's cool because I feel like what you're saying is like we've lost humanity, we've lost the tribe, the society that keeps us all going. And like you said, like if someone's not, like I could never imagine writing someone up for something so stupid because we're all human at the end of the day, like you said.

I get it. Like you have a duty to your patients, like you're not supposed to be sleeping. But if you're not like wrapped up in a blanket laid out across the chairs, like give somebody some benefit of the doubt, you know? Right. Right. Especially like a one time occurrence versus like their behavioral patterns. It's like, come on, guys. Yeah, exactly. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody's human. And I think everybody's deserving of second chances. And

I guess on that note, I'll say one thing that I think is very common with unions that I hear is that they support lazy workers or things like that. That could not be further from the truth.

I would never want to work next to somebody that is unsafe, that is not equipped to do their job. Like, and I think that is especially true for nursing unions. I'm not going... I've had some very tough conversations with nurses. I have no problem telling you, like, you are... You need to, like, shape up or you need to make changes. This might not be the area for you. Like, let's see what, you know, whatever the conversation is. But...

I'm not one that's going to stand by and like let somebody be unsafe and just like if that was even a thing like hide behind the union somehow like I said we don't have the ability to stop you know higher fire discipline that's not something that we would ever support especially as nurses I don't think

No, I think that's some anti-union propaganda trying to make it look like we're just lazy and want someone to do our work for us and do it. That's not the case. The truth is, by ourselves, we can't seem to get administration to listen to us of our needs and concerns. And unions, union reps are able to conversate with them. They're able to have conversations with the higher ups and get things done where we

aren't getting anywhere by ourselves. That's the beauty of a union. Yeah. Yeah. We meet with upper management multiple times a week and discuss a lot. And the other, the other side of the whole lazy, lazy worker trope is again, that's like very deeply has deep roots in racism. Back from when unions were first starting to form and,

some of the black workers were some of the first to unionize, and especially as federal workers, that was very deeply, that type of language and that type of rhetoric is deeply tied to racism. So I think you point that out too. It kind of helps, hopefully helps undermine that type of

Yeah, because systemic racism is very relevant still today, especially in health care. And if we just listen to our fellow co-workers who are the ones experiencing it, I think the reason I wanted to have this conversation with you is so other people can hear information directly from the source. And when we get information from a source like, you know, our colleagues or people of color and they're telling us what's happening, we should stop, take a step back and listen to them. It's still happening to this day. So you're 100 percent correct.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's all I have for us today. I really appreciate your time because like I said, I've been fairly new into unions. I'm excited to get this episode out. If you guys want to go follow her, her socials will be in the description along with a link to learn more about unions and unionization. If there's anything else you want to say?

I don't think so. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. All right, guys. Bye.