Melissa's Bio

Nurses Win Union Vote in Indiana, Pennsylvania!

By a vote count of 116 to 101, 240 RNs at Indiana Hospital selected PSEA Health Care as their certified collective bargaining agent in a secret ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board on May 21, 1999. In March of 1998, a similar vote to unionize with PSEA Health Care was defeated by one vote.

PSEA Health Care is the nursing affiliate of the Pennsylvania State Education Association created in 1993 to represent professional health care employees throughout the state. With the representation victory at Indiana, PSEA Health Care now represents nearly 6,000 nurses in 20 different hospitals and health care facilities.

"We are extremely pleased and gratified by the decision of Indiana nurses to address professional nursing concerns through the collective bargaining process," said PSEA Health Care Director Alf Nelson Jr. "With several more organizing campaigns ongoing throughout the state, I anticipate many more nurses will opt for PSEA Health Care and collective bargaining in the near future," concluded Nelson.

According to Sue Flowers, an RN at Indiana Hospital and one of the lead union supporters, "For too long, nurses have felt left out of any meaningful decisions affecting the quality of health care! Many of my nursing colleagues at both Indiana Hospital and throughout the country have now come to realize that collective bargaining is the mechanism available for nurses to have a say in their profession," noted Flowers.

SOURCE: PSEA Health Care

We invite all nurses who choose activism over apathy---empowerment over powerlessness---to join us in the:

Nightingale Network!