An article in today’s Orange County Register entitled Kaiser midwives strike back , describes complaints by some nurses at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center-Orange County in Anaheim, California who were displeased with their employer’s recent card-check recognition of a union. Specifically, some nurses asserted that they never received a “vote card” and were “not even aware the vote was actually taking place.”

The article includes quotes from James Small, Acting Regional Director for Region 21 of the National Labor Relations Board. Labor practitioners know that Mr. Small is a career NLRB official, not a political appointee. He has a great deal of experience in labor matters and is widely-respected by both unions and employers. Mr. Small had this to say about unfair labor practice Charges filed by the disaffected Kaiser nurses:

James Small, acting regional director of the NLRB in Los Angeles, said Pearce's allegation "will be carefully investigated by a board agent" to determine whether there was a possible violation of U.S. labor law. Such investigations typically take from four to seven weeks to complete, and involve taking testimony from the union, the employer and workers, he said.

Complaints like Pearce's are common after a union gains recognition through a card check, Small said. "Many times individuals call us and ... say we never had a chance to vote on this or they will say we never understood that signing this card would result in the union getting in."

Small said sometimes such complaints reflect "buyer's remorse," or that employees "didn't read carefully" what they signed.

However, workers often feel as if they were disenfranchised by the card-check process. Small said this can happen when a company and a union decide which workers will constitute a proposed bargaining unit, without necessarily taking the desires of employees into account, Small said.

Mr. Small, of course, was commenting on a specific Charge and not on the Employee Free Choice Act. But his comments raise the question of why Congress has not called on Mr. Small or any of the dozens of non-political labor experts at the NLRB to draw from their experiences with the current system.

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Note: In 1997, Kaiser Permanente and a number of unions agreed to a “National Labor-Management Partnership Agreement,” which provides:

The parties to this agreement believe that Kaiser Permanente employees should exercise free choice and decide for themselves whether or not they wish to be represented by a labor organization.

Kaiser Permanente has no objection to a union signatory to this agreement becoming the bargaining representative to its people. Where a signatory union becomes involved in organizing Kaiser Permanente employees, the employer will maintain a strictly neutral position.

It is the intention of the parties that employees' desire for exclusive bargaining representation be resolved in the most expeditious manner possible. Whenever a majority of employees in a unit the parties agree to be appropriate express clearly and unambiguously the wish to be represented by a signatory union, Kaiser Permanente agrees to recognize that union. An umpire shall be selected who will have the final authority to resolve ambiguities as to majority status and disagreements as to unit appropriateness.

Kaiser Permanente reserves the right to speak out in any appropriate manner when undue provocation is evident in an organizing campaign. Kaiser will encourage subcontractors, vendors, mergers and alliance partners to adopt the same policy regarding union representation of their employees.