Avoiding unions: supervisors are the first line of defense

Hospital employees voting in union elections are swayed by their feelings about their individual supervisors, labor experts say. If supervisors are to be effective in helping to avert unionization of hospital employees, they must be trained, says Diane Iorfida, senior vice-president of human resources at University Hospitals of Cleveland (OH) and president of the Chicago-based American Society for Health Care Human Resources Administration of the American Hospital Association. Supervisor training, according to Iorfida, should be an ongoing process and not a one-time response to the immediate possibility of unionization.