Boca Raton, FL (October 10, 2012) – A local nurse has filed a federal charge against West Boca Medical Center and its parent company for enacting a secret deal that discriminates against the nurses and gives Service Employees International Union (SEIU) operatives preferential access to the facility.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Registered Nurse Jenna Orlando filed the charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office in Tampa.

According to the charge, SEIU union officials entered into a “neutrality agreement” with West Boca Medical Center and its parent company, Tenet Healthcare Corporation. The agreement successfully greased the skids for the nurses unionization.

However, a tenacious group of nurses are seeking to petition the NLRB for a secret-ballot election to remove the unwanted union. While the so-called neutrality agreement gives SEIU union officials wide-ranging access to employee break rooms, lounges, bulletin boards, and other company facilities, nurses who oppose the union hierarchy are being denied equal access. Tenet even changed workplace procedures to deny off-duty nurses from entering the premises.

Nurses from across the country are challenging neutrality agreements signed by Tenet management. Recently, a group of nurses in McAllen, Texas filed for a decertification election with the NLRB and in July 2012 successfully voted a union out of their hospital. Just last week, two nurses in El Paso filed federal charges against Tenet and the California Nurses Association-affiliated National Nurses Organizing Committee union challenging a similar discriminatory agreement.

“So-called ‘neutrality agreements’ like this one between SEIU 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. “Tag-teamed by 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 their 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.