Read the following excerpt: Labor Law Discussion Case 3: Is Body Language Protected Activity? and prepare your paper according to the Case Study Instructions below.
Labor Law Discussion Case 3: Is Body Language Protected Activity?
The Health Care and Retirement Corporatation (HCR) owns and operates over 100 nursing homes in 27 states. Corporate headquarters are in Toledo, Ohio. One of the nursing homes is located in rural Ohio and is called Heartland. Heartland is a 100-bed facility with about 65 people employed in the nursing department (10 staff nurses [8 licensed practical nurses, 2 registered nurses] and 55 nurse aides). No employees at Heartland are represented by a union.
The nurse aides have the most contact with the residents of Heartland bathing, dressing, feeding, emptying bed pans, and so on. The nurses are responsible for making sure that hte needs of the residents are fulfilled checking on the health status of the residents, administering medicine, and communicating with physicians. Nurses also perform the duties of nurse aides when an insufficient number of nurse aides show up for work.
While night shift nurses have little to do with assigning aides duties, the day shift nurses are responsible for telling the aides what residents they are responsible for. The nature of the aides work makes them fairly interchangeable. Also, assignments are often done by following old patterns or letting the aides decide coverage among themselves. Nurses are responsible for trying to find replacement aides whne an aide does not show up for work, but they have no authority to order an aide to come in. Nurses have no authority to authorize overtime. Disciplining and performance appraisals of the aides are conducted by the director of nursing, not a staff nurse (although nurses can make comments about an aides performance in an employee counseling form). At night and on weekends, the staff nurses are the most senior personnel at the facility. The director of nursing (or an assistant) is on call and is normally contacted when nonroutine matters arise.
Barbara Young was hired in July to be the new administrator at Heartland. She was quite inexperienced, however, and was overworked. In December, Ms. young switched the Heartlands pharmacy from a local pharmacy (whose owner had close ties with the community) to a chain pharmacy located 40 miles away. This drastically increased the paperwork duties of the nurses (although it is perhaps the case that this increase occurred because Heartland and the local pharmacy were not completing the forms required by state regulations). The community was offended by this action, and Heartland experienced a drop in new admissions (some of this community discontent was fueled by the nurses).
The director of nursing position was vacant between December and February of the next year. The facility was understaffed, especially among nurse aides, and little was being done to hire new personnel. In January, three staff nurses asked to meet with Young. They wished to discuss several actions by young that the nurses thought were detrimental to the residents and affected the work of the nurses and aides. Young replied that, due to her busy schedule, they shoudl set up an appointment for later in the week.
Instead the three nurses traveled to corporate headquarters in Toledo the next day, where they met with a vice president and with Bob Custer, HCRs director of human resources. In this meeting the three nurses expressed four primary problems:
1. There were insufficient aides employed at Heartland (and substandard wages and recruiting perpetuated this ongoing problem.)
2. Little discipline was taken with regard to aides absenteeism, which placed more burden on the aides who showed up for work.
3. The pharmacy switch.
4. Communications problems between Young and the Heartlands nurses.
The nurses were told that an investigation of their complaints would be launched and that they would not be harassed for speaking out.
A week later Custer met with Heartlan
ds department heads (Young was not present). The department heads liked Young, knew the nurses had complained about Young, and assumed that Custer would fire her. The department heads supported Young in their meeting with Custer and also talked about the unprofessional behavior of the three nurses. Custer subsequently asked each person at the meeting for the names of the people he or she thought responsible for the tension at Heartland. Two of the three nurses appeared on every response; the third was on many.
Custer also met with Young. During their discussion, Young remarked to Custer about the three nurses lack of cooperation with management. Young also mentioned that some employees had, among other things, started a rumor about an affair between Custer and Young. A few days later Custer met with the facilitys aides. The complaints about Heartland were greatest among aides who worked the same shift as the three nurses. Custer took this as further evidence that the three nurses were the root of the problem.
During February, the three nurses received a variety of disciplinary notices. The circumstances surrounding their disciplinary notices for missing an in-service (internal training session) were typical of the situations for which they were disciplined: Only six nurses attended, but the three were the only absent nurses to receive warnings. Additionally Heartlands policy is to give two weeks notice before any mandatory in-service; in this instance only a few days notice was given. As a second example, a state audit found many minor mistakes by all the nurses in their unit, but only the three were disciplined.
In March, HR Director Custer met with Heartlands nurses to announce that:
* The pay for aides would be increased to hire more aides.
* Young would not be fired.
* The pharmacy situation would not be changed back.
Custer perceived the demeanor and tone of the meeting to be resistance to change and emphatic refusal to get on board and make Heartland a good facility. Custer believed the three nurses were responsible for this attitude among the nurses and concluded that they should be fired. The demeanor of the meeting, Custer admitted, was conveyed to him by the three nurses crossing their arms and rolling their eyes as Custer talked. Custer therefore concluded that the three nurses were unwilling to change their mode of operation and attitude to improve the facility. Thus Custer decided they should leave. When they refused to resign, they were fired.
INSTRUCTIONS
Be sure to fully address these 3 questions in your paper:
1. Are the nurses covered by the NLRA (National Labor Relations Act)? Remember that the NLRA excludes supervisors from protection under the act using the following definition: 2(11) The term supervisor meads any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection withthe foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine of clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.
2. Create a list of possible reasons that the three nurses were fired. Determine whether each reason is protected by Section 7.
3. If you were a member of the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board), would you rule that the Health Care and Retirement Corporatation (HCR) violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRB by discharging the three nurses (assuming that they are covered by the NLRA)? Why or why not?
The Case Study should also meet the below criteria:
* Case study response must be 2.5 3 full pages.
* APA formatting is required.
* This assignment must include a title page and reference page (not included in page count, in APA format).
* There must be a minimum of 4 scholarly sources (each source must have an APA in-text citation and an APA reference listing).
* Each Case Study includes a biblical integration component.