Unions Battle for Nurses

After a 12-hour shift in the operating room, nurse Martha Salcedo left Monterey Park Hospital and walked toward her car in the parking lot. That's where a band of purple-shirted labor activists approached her.

"We're the union that brought Tenet to the bargaining table," said a representative of the Service Employees International Union, referring to the big hospital chain.

Another SEIU rep said: "We have a guaranteed salary increase." Then the rep offered Salcedo a union card to sign.

A few days later she again was approached in the parking lot by labor organizers. This time they were with a different union -- the California Nurses Assn. These activists described the CNA as the real voice for registered nurses, and, denouncing the SEIU as selling out to management, implored her to join them.

On both occasions, Salcedo drove off without saying a word.

"I was too scared" of being seen by hospital administrators, she said.

Like it or not, Salcedo and thousands of other nurses in California have become targets of aggressive campaigns by two unions that are competing for labor dominance in the state's hospital sector.

In recent weeks, the SEIU and the CNA -- two fast-growing unions with opposing cultures and agendas -- have filed for union elections at about 20 hospitals owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. and other companies. And they're just getting started.

With sights on organizing dozens more hospitals, they have taken their campaigns not only to hospital parking lots but also to nurses' break rooms, workers' homes and the National Labor Relations Board.

The battle has drawn national attention and left many in the labor movement cringing.

"This fight has turned very personal and very ugly," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. "It's very unfortunate. It's only hurting the labor movement."

The stepped-up organizing by the unions could have broader repercussions, as hospitals face cuts in public funding, a nursing shortage and new state rules that will require them to add nurses next year.

Based on union and company estimates, 20% to 25% of the 1.3 million health-care workers in California are represented by labor unions, including employees at some of the biggest hospital chains -- Sutter Health, Catholic Healthcare West and Kaiser Permanente.