[Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #1

[the madison insurgent]

Nursing home votes union
by Jeremy Plague

On October 8, workers at Oakwood Village Nursing Home
in Madison voted overwhelmingly to organize together
as a union. The final tally was 148–104 in favor of
SEIU Local 150 being the exclusive bargaining agent. 
“We worked our tails off to get the message out about
making positive changes around here,” said organizing
committee member Chad Jenkins, a four-year veteran at
Oakwood Village. “It feels really good to know that we
can make a difference.”
As part of a relentless anti-union campaign, Jenkins
and others endured daily harassment from management
and workers alike. “Management had meetings with us
every week, and even sent letters to our houses with
nothing but lies, trying to convince us not to vote
for the union,” he said. “People who didn’t know any
better were pissed, and it took a lot of time and
communication to explain the benefits, and exactly
what a union is and how it works for us. About how we
are the union. Thankfully, the truth spoke for itself,
and we won.”
In addition to the constant barrage of letters and
meetings, management went so far as to add additional
close-captioned security cameras to achieve maximum
surveillance of employees. 
“I was constantly tailed by my supervisors, and was
even told that if I moved around the facility without
letting anyone know where I was going, I was going to
get fired,” explained Benjamin Dalsoren, another
organizing committee member. “They wanted to know
where I was at all times.”
An aspect that made this organizing drive stand out
from others was that in this case, it was not the
rights of the workers that were foremost in the minds
of the organizers. Instead, a rapidly declining
quality of care provided to the residents was the
central issue. Workers felt the only way to gain any
control in the way they do their jobs was to unionize.

“I truly love my job, and I love helping and caring
for people,” explained Mary Jo Ball, a dietary aide at
Oakwood. “But once it became apparent that they really
didn’t care about the residents, I knew we were in
trouble. I mean, if they didn’t care about them at
all, what did that say about how they felt about us?” 
Factors contributing to the deteriorating quality of
care included high turnover, low employee morale, and
increasing animosity between workers and supervisors. 
“The high turnover issue was a big deal, one I heard
many of my residents complain about in the past six
months,” Jenkins explained. “Obviously, when you’re
trying to give the best care possible to your
residents, it matters that you have good people who
enjoy their work, and who the residents recognize and
can develop relationships with. That just wasn’t
happening anymore here, and we felt that by having a
voice in things, we could change that.”
According to some residents, the difference in worker
attitude has already improved. One resident says,
“I’ve lived at Oakwood Village for six years. In just
the past year, there were so many new faces. I’ve also
noticed how overworked many of them are. Where we used
to have three or four people working at a time, now
there is one doing all the same work. But once talk
about forming a union began, they seemed to be
energized. I think realizing that they can improve
their workplace and make things better for themselves
has given them great energy.”
John Norieka, executive director of Oakwood Village,
has pledged complete cooperation with the union in
matters of collective bargaining. “Of course we are
delighted, absolutely delighted,” he explained, “to
honor the wishes of our employees to be represented. I
am absolutely committed to working constructively and
working diligently and working respectfully with this
union so that all of Oakwood’s employees will
benefit.”
After mounting such an aggressive anti-union campaign
against his workers, his comments seem quite hollow to
many. Workers have already formed a deep sense of
mistrust of Norieka,; to hear him completely turn
around and give workers and the newly formed union any
credit and support makes them suspicious. 
Workers at Oakwood Village encourage the community to
contact the author at unclejer1 at hotmail.com to thank
him for honoring his workers’ union and promising cooperation.

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