Service workers at St. Charles Medical Center-Bend in Oregon gave SEIU Local 49 the boot last week, nearly two years after voting in the union and after some 40 bargaining sessions failed to reach an initial contract.
The decertification vote came just days after St. Charles-Bend nurses represented by the Oregon Nurses Association overwhelmingly ratified a new three-year contract, suggesting that either the SEIU was the main cause of the failed negotiations, or that the Oregon Nurses Association just plays a better bargaining game. That said, our money is on the first reason.
Naturally, the hospital and the union are giving very different descriptions of what happened and who is at fault for the short-lived unionization, but despite the SEIU’s insistence that the decertification was only successful because St. Charles-Bend hired
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