A victory for all

In the private sector, it’s no simple feat to win an organizing battle.

The latest proof came on May 25 when the registered nurses who work for GuildNet, a managed long-term home care operation run by the Jewish Guild for the Blind, voted overwhelmingly to join the Federation of Nurses/UFT in the face of an employer that stooped to every dirty trick in the union-avoidance playbook.

GuildNet fired six nurses who had led the organizing effort at their workplace. On Election Day, its managers installed themselves as poll-watchers with the goal of subverting the democratic process of voting. 

But the nurses were fearless, organized and driven by a sense of honor and fairness. And they were fortified by the three-person team of Federation of Nurses/UFT Special Representative Anne Goldman and chapter chairs Renee Setteducato and Cynthia McDaniel, of Brooklyn’s Lutheran Medical Center and Manhattan’s Jewish Home and Hospital Home Care, respectively. The intimidating tactics of management were no match for them. 

Making their victory more notable, these nurses had to fight for the right to unionize and for justice in the workplace in the present anti-union climate in which the rights and benefits of many unionized workers have come under attack. 

We hope that GuildNet will now turn the page and begin negotiating a first contract in good faith and no longer begrudge these nurses their due. That’s certainly not too much to ask and shouldn’t be too much to expect from an organization that ought to have its heart in the right place, given its mission of delivering home care services to the blind.

The victory of the nurses at GuildNet was a victory for all UFT members and a reminder of how precious union representation is. Their battle for basic workplace rights is part of a far bigger uphill fight to strengthen and enforce labor rights and labor law in this country.