Texas Employment Law

Nurses union to appeal labor board decision

The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency with jurisdication over labor litigation, has ruled against seven ICU nurses who claim to have been wrongly fired from their jobs at Valley Regional Medical Center in May.

The hospital, owned by Nashville-based Hospital Corporation of America, said it fired the nurses be-cause of their refusal to take on additional “charge nurse” duties. The nurses — and the union represent-ing them — argue that taking on additional duties would have taken them away from their ICU patients, potentially placing those patients in jeopardy. Charge nurses make clinical assignments for patients and staff on the floor and for code teams, which respond to cardiac emergencies. In ICU, each nurse is as-signed two patients.

The fired nurses are members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the state ’s largest RN union and an affiliate of National Nurses United, the country’s largest RN union. NNOC-Texas filed an unfair labor practices complaint on behalf of the nurses with the regional NLRB office in Fort Worth, charging that the nurses were fired in retaliation for their union activities. NNOC-Texas also charged that the nurses were illegally denied union representation during investigatory interviews — representation guaranteed under what is known as Weingarten Rights.

Karleen George, lead labor representative for NNOC-TX, said the NRLB regional board’s decision would be appealed to the national board in Washington, while the complaint over Weingarten Rights has been deferred to arbitration. Valley Regional, for its part, filed its own papers with the NLRB, charging that the nurses’ refusal to accept additional assignments constituted an illegal work stoppage as defined by labor law. In health care, a union is required to give a hospital 10 days’ notice before any work stop-page or picketing. A decision from NRLB regarding Valley Regional’s complaint is still pending.

A statement from Valley Regional officials said the hospital “is dedicated to delivering safe, quality medical treatment and services to our community and will always act to ensure nothing interrupts the compassionate care our patients trust us to provide.” The statement emphasized the NLRB regional director’s decision that the hospital “lawfully terminated the nurses when they refused to perform the charge nurse assignment.

Texas Employment Laws Employees | Law on Employment

Manslaughter law can be straight-forward. Although there can be variations in the use of this law, which varies among states, Texas wrongful death law and a Texas wrongful death attorney are pretty just like those in other states. Most of the time, manslaughter law prosecutes any individual accountable for the death of a victim, whether they are the direct cause or if it is because of negligence that eventually lead to the victim’s death. Successful prosecution of a Texas wrongful death  claim will usually result in monetary payment for the victim’s family.

There are an assortment of cases where a Texas wrongful death lawyer may be able to provide his services. Loss of life because of medical error is a typical event, in which a medical doctor or medical worker has demonstrated negligence in the line of work to result in the Texas wrongful death of a patient under his or her care. This is usually caused by a defective prescription or failure to deliver the proper diagnosis. In such instances, a Texas wrongful death attorney will request for evidence that the medical personnel in question had the needed knowledge but failed to utilize it properly.

Auto accidents are also prevalent causes of wrongful death. A wrongful death lawsuit may be filed if the victim’s family can prove that the car owner involved was driving in such a way that the resulting automobile accident and death was obviously their fault. Frequently drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol are simple targets for a Texas wrongful death lawyer to prosecute.

Risky places of work can also be cause for premature death, particularly when even carelessness at a smaller scale could be the cause. Working conditions such as construction sites, offshore oil rigs, or places where chemical substances are used or stored are especially dangerous and even have laws and regulations that govern such sites. Cases where a company did not take the appropriate safety measures are the common reason behind death in this environment.

Product-related deaths generally take place where the correct utilization of a product based on maker’s prescribed use instructions still brings about death as a result of defects. The most appropriate examples are automobiles with flawed brake systems which fail under regular driving situations. These circumstances are adequate for the submitting of a manslaughter case, which a Texas wrongful death attorney would be happy to provide his services. The victim’s family should show in such a case that the involved defects either did not detect the product defect or were conscious of it but didn’t warn customers.

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