Federal Labor Board to Prosecute Tenet Healthcare for Scheme to Sweep Nurses into Unionization

Employees seek to throw out union after union bosses’ ugly campaign of harassment and coercion

Houston, Texas (April 3, 2009) — National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) prosecutors have filed a complaint this week against Tenet Healthcare Corporation after it entered into a backroom deal with union officials designed to force nurses into union ranks at multiple Houston-area hospitals.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, two Houston-area nurses, Esther Marissa Cuellar, a nurse at Tenet’s Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center, and Linda D. Bertrand, a nurse at Tenet’s Park Plaza Hospital and Medical Center, filed unfair labor practice charges alleging that an “Election Procedures Arrangement” (EPA) Tenet and California Nurses Association (CNA) union officials secretly established violates employees’ rights.

The unfair labor practice charges also allege that Tenet officials provided CNA union operatives with unlawful organizing assistance in violation of federal statutes: In Tenet healthcare facilities, outside union organizers are given free reign to aggressively push for a union presence; but Tenet nurses who oppose unionization, on the other hand, are forbidden from using Tenet facilities to express their views.

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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.