A group of 11 Arkansas business leaders met with the state’s congressional delegation today to voice their opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. According to Arkansas Business, the the group included Michael Keck, whose St. Vincent Health System has been found time and again to be in violation of federal labor law.
Nurses there successfully joined a union in 2000 after a previous failed attempt was overturned by the National Labor Relations Board “amid charges that St. Vincent officials improperly tried to influence staff.”
Two years later, St. Vincent was found to be involved in a similar attempt to decertify the union by “illegally lobby[ing] unions to end union representation.”
Altogether, negotiations dragged on for nearly three years before before a contract was finally ratified. Those quotes come from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, but were aggregated by the Service Employees International Union before Keck’s meeting with the delegation was announced. SEIU has been pressuring key Democrats in Arkansas to end their opposition to EFCA.
