‘Give Deirdre Her Job Back’

Kevin Byrne, Voice@Work field mobilization/communications specialist, describes how supporters of a nurse fired for seeking to form a union are calling on her employer to reinstate her.

Earlier this month, Deirdre Kirkwood was fired from her job as a nurse at Parkview Community Hospital in Riverside, Calif., while trying to form a union with United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, an affiliate of AFSCME. Today, Kirkwood and her supporters are holding a press conference at the hospital announcing plans to file charges against the hospital for harassing and illegally monitoring union supporters and calling on the hospital to give Kirkwood her job back. Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her support of the nurses’ campaign to form a union in a letter released at the news conference.

Kirkwood, who says she loves Parkview, plans to fight for her job and is encouraging her co-workers not to give up on their efforts to form a union. 

Please choose courage over fear. The most important thing you can do now is learn more about what it means to form a union, sign a union card and vote ‘Yes’ once the election occurs.

As a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit, Kirkwood cared for babies who weigh as little as two pounds and who are so sick they can’t breathe on their own. These fragile children are hooked up to highly specialized equipment, tubes and monitors. Nurses such as Kirkwood care for these babies, as well as counsel and educate worried parents.

Kirkwood loved her job but was frustrated by inconsistent policies, haphazard staffing levels and no real voice in improving patient care. So Kirkwood, along with her co-workers, decided to come together and form a union. A highly competent and well-respected nurse, Kirkwood was a key workplace leader, encouraging her co-workers to support the union campaign.

But late on Friday, Jan. 4, the hospital’s human resources manager called Kirkwood into a meeting, presented her with her last paycheck and fired her for “poor morale.” A security guard brought Kirkwood her purse and she was told to leave and not come back. After seven years with a spotless performance record, she was incredulous. Poor morale hardly describes Kirkwood, the same employee who spearheaded the department’s holiday gift-giving to managers.

But the hospital didn’t stop at firing Kirkwood. Management continues to harass her and intimidate her co-workers. On the evening of Jan. 7, Deirdre and her family and friends went to the hospital to hand out fliers telling her story to fellow employees. Three police cars showed up to expel them from outside the hospital. When the nurses held a private organizing meeting at Deirdre’s church, an administrator and two managers showed up with a security guard and tried to muscle their way in. Outside the hospital, security guards photographed and videotaped nurses talking to union organizers. When union supporters leafleted outside the hospital, administrators turned on the sprinklers full-blast.

But Kirkwood and her co-workers are not giving up to the hospital’s campaign of fear and intimidation. Her co-workers are rallying around her, signing a petition in her support and re-doubling their efforts to collect union cards. The union will file charges against the hospital for harassing and illegally monitoring union supporters. The nurses are demanding the hospital allow them to choose whether to have a union in a fair election process free from intimidation and harassment.

If the Employee Free Choice Act was law, it would not be so easy for employers like Parkview Community Hospital to fire union supporters during an organizing drive. Employers would face stiffer penalties for their behavior, such as being liable for fines of up to $20,000 per charge. When the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law, nurses like Kirkwood won’t have to risk their careers and their livelihood to stand up for their patients and communities.

In January 2008, Clinton expressed her support for nurses’ efforts to form a union with AFSCME in California. Read her letter of support here.

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