Determining appropriate healthcare bargaining units: NLRB's historic rule making move.

On August 25, 1974 the Taft-Hartley Amendments (Public Law 93-360) took effect and mandated that voluntary not-for-profit hospitals enter into the process of collective bargaining. The belated entrance of these hospitals into the process stems from a change in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 where the law specifically exempted voluntary hospitals from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935. In deleting this exemption, Congress extended labor relations protection to employees of voluntary hospitals and all other healthcare institutions except those under government and public ownership. As far as most hospital chief executive officers were concerned, labor relations would never be the same again.