Our current union chairperson, Katie, has been on the labor management committe for 10 years. She has been chairperson since the late 1990`s, and continues to be co-chair the last 2 contracts with another RN. We work in a small, less than 30 bed rural hospital with 2 OR rooms, but we are expanding the OR to 3 rooms currently.

Katie applied was promoted to charge nurse because we didn`t have a manager and someone had to act like they were in charge). Katie then applied for the OR managers position last winter with encouragement from the director of nursing. (She wasn`t qualified, no BSN, no managerial experience and sometime a terribly intimadating attitude) Fortunatly a very qualified canidate was recruited and hired. Now Katie is "sucking up" big time to the new manager and has been a big brown noser with the DON for past few years. Many of my co-workers feel their plan is to groom Katie to be the OR manager when the current one retires in appox 5 years. Now there lies the delemia. Katie is so pro management, it makes her look good in their eye, but many of the nursing staff want her off the labor management team because she is playing both sides of the court. There are others who would joing the labor management team, but how do we go about getting an election and getting Katie off the team? Any ideas????