This Is What It's Like To Sit Through An Anti-Union Meeting At Work

[VA_Jill]

6. When I was hired

for my first nursing job, I was *explicitly* told that if I was ever caught in any kind of union organizing or promoting activity at that facility, I would be summarily fired. "We think we treat our employees well enough that there is no need for a union," was what I was told. I never had to sit through this kind of talk at an employee meeting, and I never thought to ask any of the other new grads if they had been told the same thing. I'm guessing they were, however. Tennessee is a right to work, or as my late ex liked to say, a right to slave state. There is only one hospital that I know of in east Tennessee where the nurses have a union, and that's in….surprise…Oak Ridge, which is something of an anomaly any way you cut it. However, I worked in number of other hospitals in that part of the state, and only in that one was I ever warned against any kind of union activity or told I'd be fired if I participated in it. I suspect that kind of intimidation may actually be illegal, even in Tennessee.