Letter: Recognize nurses’ voices at Memorial Hospital of Salem County
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To the Editor:
It is sad that corporations have stacked the deck so far against workers that many are without any ability to speak up for themselves and their professions.
I am a nurse at Memorial Hospital of Salem County. In 2010, my concern for safe staffing, nursing professionalism and working conditions motivated me to work with my co-workers on trying to organize a union in our hospital. An overwhelming number of registered nurses voted to join the Health Professionals and Allied Employees.
The corporation which owns our hospital, Community Health Systems Inc., has challenged our rights to be certified as a union by filing appeals with the National Labor Relations Board. CHS is claiming that bedside nurses are managers. We do not perform any managerial duties at all.
Through a nurses’ union, we will have a voice at the bargaining table to speak up for patient care, which means better patient outcomes.
We continue to press our case in front of the NLRB because we want to do what is best for our patients. Yet, because of partisan gridlock in Congress around nominations to the NLRB, corporations are able to shut down any effort by workers to improve their workplace.
Congress needs to consider the interests of hospital patients like those at Memorial Hospital of Salem County and approve the outstanding nominations to the NLRB.
TRACY McALLISTER
Bridgeton
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