A majority of nurses have signed union cards, which have been submitted to the National Labor Relations Board, union officials said Monday.

Union organizers needed 30 percent of nurses to sign cards before they could file a petition with the federal labor board seeking permission to form a union. But Service Employees International Union organizer Rick Smith said a majority of Tampa General's estimated 740 nurses signed cards, but he would not say how many.

The National Labor Relations Board will now set a date and rules for an election for nurses to vote on creating a union.

The petition comes as more nurses, squeezed like doctors and hospitals by the rise of managed care companies, are forming unions. Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale and Lawnwood Regional Medical Center in Fort Pierce, and a hospital in Port St. Lucie, have voted to be represented by unions. Indian River Hospital is already represented by a union.

Tampa General's administrators have, natuarally, campaigned against the union drive. The letter sent recently to TGH nurses by the *chief of staff*, Margarita R. Cancio, MD. This apparently followed a telephone campaign to identify which nurses were working at hospitals in the area. President Bruce Siegel sent a letter to employees last month asking them not to sign union cards. He said at a TGH employees meeting that a union could lead to picket lines at the hospital.

"If you think TGH is getting bad publicity now, wait for that to happen," Siegel was quoted saying in the hospital's internal newsletter. "If people don't agree with the union and cross picket lines . . . they will be persecuted and denigrated for years to come."

He promised in other letters to give employees an average 4 percent pay raise next year and ease staffing shortages by recruiting new nurses. Siegel also instituted a new recruitment policy that will give employees $1,000 for every person they successfully recruit, although the bonus policy lasts only until Sept. 30.

Siegel, who was not available for comment Monday, told employees he planned the changes before the union drive.

TGH employees voted against unions in 1994 and 1996, although the current drive, unlike others, seeks to unionize only registered nurses.

Nurses say they need an organized union to exert control over budget-driven decisions, which are made in secret since the formerly public hospital became a private non-profit in 1997.

"This is not about Dr. Siegel," said Daryl Mencher, an emergency room nurse who began at Tampa General 22 years ago. "It's about us participating in the process and having power."

Until now, she said, nurses have had little say over decisions that affected their jobs. To save money, for example, Siegel cut employees who transported patients around the hospital -- but didn't ask nurses how the cut would affect them.

"We are getting left behind," Mencher said.

It is only through sharing our experiences and strengths that we can overcome the effects the violence has had on our professional and personal lives. It is through well-focused individual and collective interaction and action that healing and empowerment will come.

I invite all nurses who choose activism over apathy---empowerment over powerlessness---to join us in the Nightingale Network.

Melissa Franklin RN Co-Founder, Nightingale Network