UNION TARGETING NURSES AT ST. FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER

United Food and Commercial Workers International is sending literature about the union to nurses at St. Francis Medical Center and will hold a meeting in Cape Girardeau Thursday.

UFCW Local 655 in St. Louis has sent letters about the union to registered nurses employed by St. Francis, said Gary Hall of Local 655. He said that was all the information he could release.

Sources who have seen the letters say a meeting about the union has been scheduled at the Holiday Inn on Thursday.

Local 655 is the union that represents registered nurses at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis. The nurses there voted for union representation in July 1999.

The Missouri Hospital Association says other unions representing health-care workers in Missouri are the Missouri Nurses Association, which represents approximately 1,000 nurses at University Hospital and Clinics in Columbia and at state mental-health hospitals, and the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents registered nurses and other health-care workers at five Veterans Administration hospitals in the state.

"Union membership is not widespread among health-care workers in Missouri," said Barbara Long of the Missouri Hospital Association. "But it is becoming more widespread nationally."

Nationally, almost 15 percent of all hospital workers and about 9 percent of nursing home and personal-care workers are members of unions, Long said.

Kim Groves, a marketing and public-relations specialist at St. Francis Medical Center, said the hospital administration has not been contacted by the union. At this point the union is just distributing literature, she said.

Nancy Bray, marketing director at Southeast Missouri Hospital, said union literature has not been circulating at Southeast.

The National Labor Relations Board, which is the government entity that oversees union elections, says there are procedures that must be followed before a union can represent workers:

The union must file a petition for an election accompanied by the signatures of at least 30 percent of the employees in the proposed bargaining unit. The units are made up of certain types of employees such as registered nurses or technicians or skilled maintenance workers. Once any issues between management and the union are resolved, the NLRB sets and oversees an election among eligible employees on whether they want the union to be their collective bargaining representative. At least 50 percent plus 1 of those who cast ballots must vote in favor of the union before it can represent employees.