ABSTRACT

The United States Congress has passed legislation removing the exemption of voluntary, or nonprofit, hospitals and nursing homes from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act. This legislation, long a goal of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, in which District 1199 plays a key role, opens the door to the organization of hospital workers on a nationwide scale. The potential for the organization of voluntary hospital employees is enormous. The labor movement in the United States, organized along craft lines until the great organizing drives of the CIO in the 1930s, shunned the organization of the huge work force staffing the country’s voluntary hospitals. New York hospital workers in 1199’s Hospital and Guild Divisions, whose organization had been made possible by a small force of committed drug store workers ten years earlier, joined with the Drug Division to provide funds and organizers for the National Union drive.