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November 12, 2003PETOSKEY NURSES STRIKEHopes for mail votes have fizzledByRecord-Eagle staff writer PETOSKEY - Working nurses at Northern Michigan Hospital apparently won't get a chance to vote by mail in Thursday's Teamsters decertification election. Hospital spokesman Thomas Spencer said the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., has not yet responded to hospital management's appeal. There's no longer enough time to switch and allow mail-in ballots for all who want them, he said. "It's a foregone conclusion," Spencer said. "At this point, it's just not even possible. We're disappointed." On Thursday, both working and striking nurses at NMH will vote on whether to retain Teamsters Local 406 as their bargaining representative for another year. The NLRB is allowing striking nurses working in other cities and states to vote by mail. NLRB regional director Stephen Glasser said that unless a nurse is away on Thursday for some work-related reason, he or she cannot vote by mail. Hospital officials initially opposed any voting by mail. But management later determined as many as 45 working nurses will be adversely impacted by an inability to vote away from Thursday's polling sites - at the hospital's main and Lockwood campuses, as well as at the Emmet County building. "We've been saying from the beginning, whatever allows those who have a right to vote a vote is our interest," Spencer said. Teamsters attorney Ted Iorio said the union all along supported letting all nurses vote by mail if they so chose. The Teamsters also did not oppose hospital management's recent appeal to Washington, he said. "It wasn't our doing, and the hospital has to sleep in the bed that they've made," he said.
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