What will change is that we, the nurses, will negotiate fair, common sense ground rules: a fair discipline procedure so they can’t just fire people for no reason, staffing rules that will improve patient safety, rules on scheduling that are fair for everyone. Often times this improves employees’ relationships with their managers because the rules are clear. Under intense pressure from CEOs focused on the bottom line, managers are often incentivized to cut staffing and eliminate senior career nurses. Fair contract language can alleviate those pressures so that nurses and managers can focus on patients. Union nurses talk to their managers all the time. The idea that we somehow will have to go through some mysterious “3rd party” to talk to our managers about every little thing is nothing more than a scare tactic by union busters who are here to intimidate us from exercising our rights as American workers.
