Registered Nurses working for Palmer-based Valley Hospital Association Inc. voted 92-33 to not seek union representation from the Alaska Nurses Association, or AaNA. The decision came Jan. 30, exactly seven weeks after AaNA filed a petition with enough signatures to require Valley's nurses to cast the vote.
Cathy Kellegher, the contract administrator for Valley Hospital, said the vote was an "overwhelming" show of support for the current administration even though contract negotiations are not yet complete with the hospital's new partner, Plano, Texas-based Triad Hospitals Inc.
Randall Moody, a R.N. who works in Valley Hospital's operating room, voted against the unionization effort. He said the nurses are obligated to give their new corporate partner, which is helping to foot the bill on a new $75 million hospital, a chance to prove itself.
"Given that we're at the end of the line here in Alaska, all hospitals are scrambling for nurses, and I think we're going to pull a lot of people from Anchorage and from Outside with the new facility, I just don't see doing anything to unionize if we don't have to," he said.
Literature distributed by AaNA cited uncertainty about the future of patient care at Valley Hospital, since majority ownership of the healthcare provider will be transferred from the not-for-profit association to the nation's third largest for-profit healthcare corporation.
The association argued that "Nurses at the Valley are not particularly dissatisfied with the administration of the hospital at the moment, but the uncertainty of the future has lead many to be proactive in support of the unionization effort."
Those concerns have merit, said Elizabeth Ripley, the director of marketing and public relations for Valley Hospital. A quarter of the 125 votes cast were in favor of unionization. That only reinforced the importance of communication betwen the hospital's nurses and administration, she said.
"There's a nursing shortage all over the country, so it behooves us to make sure the nurses are happy," she said. "It (the vote) was positive for us in that it gives us an opportunity to learn what we need to do to keep our nurses happy and trusting us."
If change in the management structure does affect Valley Hospital's nurses, it will do so subtly. That's according to Patricia Senner, the president of AaNA, who noted that Valley's nurses work on an at-will basis, so their jobs are subject to administrative whims.
Senner said nurses from other Triad hospitals spoke to AaNA about the administrative reorganization of their facilities. She added that the nurses said changes in workload, pay-rate and work schedules came over two or three years.
"If the changes are too drastic and the nurses leave, Valley won't have a huge pool from which to replace the nurses. Nobody's going to want to leave Anchorage, where contracts are written, for a worse situation in the Valley," Senner said.
Under union rules secured by the National Labor Relations Act, the nurses must wait at least one year before renewing any union efforts with AaNA. Valley Hospital's Kellegher, however, said that was unlikely, since the association approached the hospital and because nurses are in short supply.
"The nurses association is on a big organizing drive across the state," she said. "We're going through a big change with Triad, and that causes some insecurity.
"But, Triad needs to recruit two times as many people into the hospital as we already have, so why upset its existing resources? That doesn't make sense," Kellegher said.
If, after the required time passes, the nurses decide to unionize, AaNA will meet with them, said Dianne O'Connell, the labor program director for the association.
"I personally hope for the best for Valley Hospital and its nurses. I hope that their premonition is correct and that it turns into a shining beacon of employee-administration relations that we can all follow. In the event that it doesn't, we will be more then happy to discuss representation with them again," O'Connell said.
In the meantime, Valley Hospital's nurses will continue to be represented under the legislative arm of the nurses association, although they won't receive representation in terms of collective bargaining.
