A profile of hospital union election activity, 1985--1994 NLRB rulemaking and results in right-to-work states.

The authors present union election results in non-governmental, short-term hospitals for the 10-year period 1985--1994. The authors include profiles for the periods before (1985--1989) and after (1990--1994) the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulemaking. When comparing the period data, they found that the impact of rulemaking was a reduction in mean bargaining unit size, an increase in the absolute number of elections in hospitals, and an increase in the percentage of union wins. Their examination of hospital union election results in right-to-work (RTW) versus non-RTW states revealed that unions did not aggressively try to organize workers in non-RTW states and, when they did, they were not very successful. When the authors examined only initial recognition elections during the periods before and after rulemaking, as well as the whole 10 years, regression analysis identified three variables significantly related to union wins: the 1989 NLRB rule change, bargaining unit size, and employee participation rates.