Franklin Hospital Medical Center nurses will vote on Friday, Aug. 3 whether they want to elect the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), a union that represents nurses at some Nassau County health care facilities such as North Shore University Hospitals and Plainview and Syosset, as their official representatives.

Currently, there are 250 registered nurses (RN) working at Franklin. Those 250 nurses will vote on whether to join NYSA.

If the nurses do elect to join the NYSA union, NYSA would be certified as the collective bargaining representatives. "The nurses had first contacted us because they have seen that other RNs in other hospital were able to take steps toward improving their working conditions by unionizing," said Mark Genovese of the NYSA. "They decided now was their time. We started working with them for the past couple of months to build support."

The NYSA filed for the election on June 15. According to Genovese, the nurses at Franklin presently do not have a contract. "There's no real formal, uniform pay scale. They have no input as to their pay and their benefits and no grievance process," he said.

If the nurses do decide to elect NYSA as their union, NYSA will begin the process of establishing a contract within two months of the election. However, Genovese expects that, if NYSA does represent Franklin's nurses, negotiations will be tough. "They are part of the North Shore system and we've always had very tough negotiations with North Shore," he said.

- Joe Rizza