GHC CLAIMS THEY’RE NOT UNION BUSTING. THEIR ACTIONS SAY OTHERWISE
GHC’s Union-Busting Legal Strategy
Under the guise of protecting “democracy,” GHC management and their lawyers at the Husch Blackwell firm have pursued a legal strategy that has:
Been directed by an explicitly anti-worker, anti-union philosophy
Overridden the interests of 70% of primary and urgent care employees who want a union –– instead dictating a new and much larger bargaining unit that encompasses ALL direct-care workers in the system
Forced hundreds of workers into a bargaining unit they did not explicitly ask for
They have also intended to use the Trump Labor Board and this case to make it harder for workers not just at GHC, but across the country, to organize – a tactic more extreme than even Amazon or Starbucks has advocated.
In their brief against our union, GHC administrators indicate they want to overturn the decisions that allow workers, rather than employers, to choose an appropriate reasonable bargaining unit (In Re Specialty Healthcare & Rehab. Ctr. of Mobile, 357 NLRB 934, 947 [2011] and Am. Steel Constr., Inc., 372 NLRB No. 23 [Dec. 14, 2022]).
GHC’s brief also says that they intend to overturn decades-old standards that presume a single healthcare facility is an appropriate place for a union. In other words, they would potentially seek to force workers at a single workplace to organize workers in far-away cities or states just to form their union.
Read the employer’s full brief here; both footnotes above can be found on page 1.
GHC’s anti-union INTERNAL messaging CAMPAIGN
Internally, GHC management and their lawyers have also waged an aggressive union-busting campaign:
Administrators have regularly issued untrue and/or misleading communications that tell us our union will disempower us, and that we are likely to either lose or negotiate worse benefits and working conditions through collective bargaining. See more here.
Sample anti-union message from GHC
GHC’s unfair labor practices
Administrators have engaged in multiple violations of federal labor law (Unfair Labor Practices, or ULPs). We have now filed dozens of allegations of ULPs with the NLRB. These ULPs include:
Forbidding us from talking about our union at all times during the day, or at the worksite
Removing union materials
Holding mandatory antiunion meetings
Unilaterally changing working conditions in order to influence the vote
Filing a baseless and retaliatory ULP targeting a pro-union worker
Pervasive and intimidating surveillance of us at work
Using union activity as a factor in disciplinary actions against union leaders
Read more about the ULP charges we filed on January 15th, April 10th, April 21st, and May 13th.
The National Labor Relations Board has decided to block the election, given the seriousness of the charges:
GHC administrators’ actions have created a hostile and intimidating workplace where we have been inhibited or prohibited from freely exercising our rights.
GHC has now committed so many Unfair Labor Practices that a fair election is no longer possible.
