El Paso, TX (October 3, 2012) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, an El Paso nurse filed federal charges against a California-based nurse union and Providence Memorial Hospital for enacting a secret deal that gives union organizers preferential access to the facility.

Nurse Perry Pielaet filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office in Phoenix.

California Nurses Association-affiliated National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) union officials entered into a “neutrality agreement” with Providence Memorial Hospital and its parent company, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, designed to grease the skids for the nurses’ unionization.

The agreement gives union organizers wide-ranging access to employee break rooms, lounges, and other company facilities. On the other hand, Tenet is refusing to grant nurses who oppose unionization equal access to its facilities, going so far as to change workplace procedures to deny off-duty nurses access to company facilities.

Despite the company’s blatant viewpoint discrimination, a tenacious group of nurses led by Pielaet are working to educate their fellow nurses about the impact of unionization.

NNOC union officials have pushed hard for “neutrality agreements” with healthcare providers nationwide. Most recently, a group of nurses in McAllen, Texas filed for a decertification election with the NLRB and in July 2012 successfully voted the union out of their hospital.

“So-called ‘neutrality agreements’ like this one between union officials and hospital management are hardly neutral: They give union organizers license to browbeat and intimidate workers into acceding to unionization,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Caught between union bosses and corporate executives who abandon their employees to gain what will likely be very short term union boss favors, these nurses have been stripped of their rights to organize against forced unionism in their workplace.”

“Medical professionals shouldn’t be subjected to backroom deals that give union operatives preferential treatment at the expense of employees’ workplace rights.”

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.