Philadelphia area RNs say Union YES!

In separate elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board over the past week, registered nurses at two area hospitals voted to become members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. RNs at Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill voted 164-130 on January 16th to join the union. Four days later, RNs at Hahnemann University Hospital in Center City held their vote. Hahnemann presented their nurses with an unusual anti-union tactic that got national attention, but didn’t dampen the RNs’ spirits for standing up for themselves and their patients — they voted 516-117 to join PASNAP. The two votes will bring union representation to over 1,200 RNs, and the momentum is still building — the 450 RNs at St Christopher’s Children’s Hospital, which like Hahnemann is owned by national hospital chain Tenet Healthcare, will vote soon in their own NLRB representation election. Welcome to the union, brothers and sisters — roll the union on!

A look back at the first year of the Raising Wages campaign

The AFL-CIO held its first Raising Wages Summit a year ago. The summit was designed to bring together the many activists and organizations across the country who had been fighting to raise living standards for working people and close the wealth and income gap that has grown so much in the past decade. The first year saw notable successes, including Philadelphia’s recent passage of a law to step up enforcement of strictures against wage theft. The AFL-CIO’s summary of the first year of the Raising Wages campaign includes a link to their full, downloadable report. We’ve made great strides but there is so much left to do. As President Trumka said, “In the year ahead, we will continue to push for a comprehensive economic agenda that puts working people first. Raising wages is not a hobby, it is our mission.”

Celebrate grassroots organizing with the Media Mobilizing Project on Friday, January 29th

On Friday, January 29th, join the Media Mobilizing Project for their 10th Annual Community Building Dinner and for the premiere of their film Groundwork – Justice in the Birthplace of America, a portrait of five Philadelphians fighting at the grassroots level to win justice for their communities. Check out the Facebook event page for all the details of this great evening with MMP.

Media Mobilizing Project 10th Annual Community Building Dinner

Friday January 29th, 6:00 – 9:00 PM

University of the Arts, Hamilton Hall, 320 South Broad Street, Philadelphia

Thank you to the men and women who will keep us safe this weekend during Winter Storm Jonas

As the Northeast braces for Winter Storm Jonas, we say “Thank you!” to all the men and women who will keep working this weekend in the service of keeping our roads clear, our hospitals staffed, our emergency services on call and on the job, our stores open, and our utilities and public services in good repair. Your dedication and hard work represents the best of what organized labor stands for!

Source – http://www.pa.aflcio.org/philaflcio/index.cfm?action=article&articleID=FE4B0CC8-C0E1-4A43-9BBD-A1234648EF7B

Attention: All Interested Individuals,

– If you are unemployed, laid-off, looking for your first job, or simply want to advance or change your career, this is the right place to start.  Check out the resources located on this site, to find out more about Philadelphia job openings, job training programs, career trends. Visit a PA CareerLink® center near you. All services are free to Philadelphia residents.

Source – http://www.philaworks.org/

By Richard Freeman, Eunice Han, Brendan Duke, David Madland

– Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association—a case that could further erode union coverage. Now, new economic research from the Center for American Progress strongly suggests that one-third of the decline in the share of middle class workers is directly tied to the decreasing share of workers in unions.

The analysis breaks down the falling share of middle-class workers into three factors associated with unions—the decline in the share of workers in unions, known as union coverage; a decline in the share of union workers who are middle class relative to nonunion workers, known as the union equality effect; and the interaction between the decline in union coverage and the union equality effect. By using an economic technique known as a shift-share decomposition, the research finds a decline in union coverage accounting for 35 percent of the falling share of middle-class workers and that the combination of the shrinking share of union workers and the reduction in the union equality effect explains almost half of the decline in middle-class workers.

The United States has long called itself a middle-class nation. But that statement is less true today than it was 30 years ago.

The most widely used barometer of the financial health of the middle class—real median household income as published by the U.S. Census Bureau—has barely grown over the last thirty years. At the same time, the middle class has been hollowed out as incomes have polarized, with more households at the top and the bottom and fewer in the middle of the income distribution. A recent report by the Pew Research Center showed that the share of adults in the middle class—defined as adults whose households make between 67 percent and 200 percent of median U.S. income—fell from 61 percent in 1971 to just 50 percent in 2014.

Unsurprisingly, the same trends of slow growth and rapid polarization are also found in the main source of middle-class income: wage and salary earnings. Median weekly earnings of full-time workers grew 18 percent between 1984 and 2014 despite a 79 percent increase in labor productivity in the United States. As with the income distribution, the earnings distribution has polarized: the share of full-time workers who make between 67 percent and 200 percent of median U.S. earnings fell from 68 percent in 1984 to 60 percent in 2014.

This report examines the role that the decline of labor unions over the past 30 years has played in the hollowing out of the U.S. earnings distribution. We* expect that the decline of unions has reduced the share of middle-class workers because union workers are more likely to be middle class than nonunion workers. Unions represent workers in the middle of the income distribution, which raises the earnings of workers who would otherwise fall below the middle-class threshold. We call the higher share of union workers among middle-class workers the union equality effect.

In this report, we use a technique—known as a shift-share decomposition—that breaks down the falling share of middle-class workers into three factors associated with unionism:

• The first part is due to the decline in union coverage, namely the fact that when a smaller share of workers are in unions, fewer workers benefit from the union equality effect.
• The second part is due to a decline in the union equality effect. As earnings have polarized over the past 30 years, the middle-class share of union workers fell from 83 percent to 72 percent, which is more than the decrease in the share of nonunion workers in the middle class. This reduces the union equality effect.
• The third part is associated with the interaction between the decline in union coverage and the union equality effect.

The decomposition leaves a residual part with no direct connection to unionism that is instead due to the decline in the middle-class share of nonunion workers.

Our main findings are that the decline in union coverage accounts for 35 percent of the falling share of middle-class workers and that the combination of the shrinking share of union workers and the reduction in the union equality effect explains almost half of the decline in middle-class workers. To the extent that union-induced wage increases spill over from union to nonunion workers and that union advocacy produces economic and social policies that benefit the middle class, our results understate the impact of the weakening labor movement on the hollowing out of the U.S. middle class.

Source – https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2016/01/13/128366/what-do-unions-do-for-the-middle-class/

By John George

– A majority of the registered nurses at Delaware County Memorial Hospital have voted to join PASNAP, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals.

The vote, in a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16, was 164 to 130 in favor of unionization.

Angela Neopolitano, a registered nurse who has worked at the Drexel Hill, Pa., hospital for 34 years, said the vote followed concerns expressed by the nurses about “staff and other working conditions” and a desire to have a voice in the pending sale of Crozer-Keystone Health System, Delaware County Memorial’s parent company, to Prospect Medical Holdings.

Crozer-Keystone, in a statement released Monday, said, “We are disappointed in the results of this election, because we do not believe a union is in the best interest of DCMH, its nurses, or the community. However, we respect the right of employees to choose union representation. After the results of the election are certified by the National Labor Relations Board, we will meet with the union to bargain in good faith. We look forward to working with PASNAP to negotiate a contract that is fair for nurses and the hospital.”

Prospect Medical Holdings of Culver City, Calif., signed a definitive agreement to acquire Crozer-Keystone earlier this month. The deal still requires regulatory approvals.

On Saturday, Crozer-Keystone opened a $16.5 million ambulatory care center — the 50,000-square-foot Crozer-Keystone at Broomall — at what had been a Pathmark grocery store on Lawrence Road near Route 3.

PASNAP already represents 650 nurses and paramedics employed by the Delaware County health system.

Bill Cruice, PASNAP’s executive director, said nurses are actively organizing to join PASNAP at two other locations: 850 Hahnemann University Hospital nurses will vote in an NLRB-conducted election this week, and 450 registered nurses at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children will vote in February.

Both Hahnemann and St. Christopher’s are owned and operated by Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC) of Dallas, Texas.

“Our union is growing and getting stronger because nurses know they need a strong, collective voice to effectively advocate for their patients and their profession,” Cruice said.

Source – http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/morning_roundup/2016/01/nurses-at-delco-hospital-vote-to-unionize.html