Workers at John Day¡s Blue Mountain Hospital push to join AFSCME

Nurses in John Day were laughed at when they came before the elected board of the Blue Mountain Hospital District to talk about wages. So they thought about forming a union. A December 2002 call to the Oregon Nurses Association got them a referral to Council 75 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents workers at two similar public hospital districts in Wallowa and Wasco counties.

And organizer Debra Kidney began making the five-hour trek from AFSCME headquarters in Portland.

It’s the first union organizing drive in some time to come to John Day, an Eastern Oregon town of 1,800 inhabitants located 120 miles south of Pendleton. Public employees are about the only union presence there. The formerly robust timber economy that once supported union lumber mills has shriveled, and the mills that remain are not union, Kidney said.

In March, Kidney brought AFSCME staff and members from elsewhere to help pro-union workers at the district’s hospital and nursing home to canvass their co-workers. They found enough support to go ahead with the campaign, and in April, they filed for a union election with the Oregon Employment Relations Board. The unit would consist of 97 employees, basically all employees of the district except management and its assistants, and security officers. Kidney said employees want a greater say in the policies of the hospital and nursing home, and they want fully paid health benefits.

Ballots went out June 30 and are due back July 14. Kidney predicts a win for the union, but says there’s no sure thing since management, contracted to a Chicago firm, is waging what she called a nasty anti-union campaign, and spending tax dollars to do it. They’ve hired a Portland anti-union law firm to help with the campaign, and have sent at least eight letters to employees urging them to vote against the union.

� Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.