re: Nurses at University Medical Center vote to unionize, a Louisiana first

Ochsner must be worried

Does the new University Hospital/UMC draw patients with private insurance/Medicare, or is it just a newer version of Charity Hospital and Hotel Dieu (old university hospital) with a patient population ranging from no insurance to Medicaid at best?

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one of the state's largest, with 598 eligible members.

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That doesn't sound anywhere near accurate. Even the piddling little telcom union I'm in boasts Louisiana membership numbers in the thousands. You've got UPS workers who are all unionized. Pipe fitters and other trades in plants like Exxon, et al. Sure seems like there are way larger unions in Louisiana--certainly enough so that 598 members would not represent "one of the state's largest."

Can still be "one of" even if not the largest.

It is a pretty broad term

If Louisiana wants to keep their nurses from going to the West Coast for better paying jobs, this is the best thing they could do.

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If you owned a business do you want employees demanding shite then having leverage over you? Healthcare economics is a bit different of a beast but my post was in general relation to businesses and unions.

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There are always two sides to a story. Non-unionized nurses don’t get much vacation time, and female nurses who get pregnant often have a hard time getting paid maternity leave. You have to look at it from the perspective of the nurses.

The reality is that states in the Deep South are losing RNs to the west coast for a multitude of reasons, not just pay. It’s pretty damn simple, if you want to keep them, pay them more and make them like their job.

Yes, I did. But you have continuously kept shitting on unions and made them out to be worse than what they really are. Like I said, ALL of the talented nurses are leaving the deep south and Midwest where the union presence is weak, and moving to states like California where they have their own state-run nursing union. If LA, TX, MS, and AL want to keep their nurses, then the corporate hospitals need to pay them more. It’s pretty damn simple.

We can argue all day long about the pros and cons of nursing unions, but that doesn’t change the fact that nurses will go to where they will make the most money and receive the most benefits. That’s the reality, and if you want to keep your nurses, then give them what they want.

California pays more than what the COL adjustment allows. That’s why a lot of RNs move there after gaining several years of experience in their home state.

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one of the state's largest, with 598 eligible members.
That doesn't sound anywhere near accurate. Even the piddling little telcom union I'm in boasts Louisiana membership numbers in the thousands. You've got UPS workers who are all unionized. Pipe fitters and other trades in plants like Exxon, et al. Sure seems like there are way larger unions in Louisiana--certainly enough so that 598 members would not represent "one of the state's largest."

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There are 598 eligible rank and file members at that hospital. National Nurses was born from CNA, California Nurses Association, when it merged with another union in Maine. NNU is huge. It is the only real national union for nurses. It is not perfect. Our union has its share of issues like any large organization, but we are still in a much better place than if we continued to allow hospital administrators to frick us (and the doctors). Residents here are union as are the nurses. Some of the docs wish they were but it's not really possible for them. They take the brunt because they aren't protected. I feel bad for them.

<--------This nurse left Alabama for a 6 week assignment and never worked in the South again. Being a nurse in the south is like being in a third world country. I cant ever work there again.