“If and when a Democrat takes the White House, expect to see the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow employees to form unions when a majority signed cards authorizing union representation,” says Kansas City Star workplace reporter Diane Stafford.

While this workplace prediction is just one of many by Stafford for 2008, it probably poses the most concern to operators of seniors housing and the long term care industry. The proposed Employee Free Choice Act, also called “card check,” would make it possible for work places to become unionized if a majority of employees sign union authorization cards, not requiring the secret ballot elections that have been in place for almost sixty years. The proposed act would also have stronger penalties on companies that illegally coerce employees to prevent them from joining a union.

“Since the Taft-Hartley Act of the 1940s, the right to unionize has been under secret ballot election,” says Maribeth Bersani, senior vice president of public policy for the Assisted Living Federation of America. “With this so-called Employee Free Choice Act, formation would come from employees filling out a card. This could easily create an environment where a lot of pressure could be exerted to force someone to join a union.”

Under the proposed act, some employers say they also are concerned that employees will be illegally coerced into forming and joining a union. Pro-union forces have long said that current laws make it easy for employers to illegally coerce employees to prevent them from forming and joining unions.

“We don’t see the issue as company versus union,” Bersani says. “We see this as an employee issue and feel the employee should have the right to the secret ballot.”

To read more of Diane Stafford’s workplace trends and predictions for 2008, visit: http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/419187.html

A web site aimed at employees of assisted-living communities, residents and their families is up and running, soliciting what it terms ways to improve facilities.

“The Campaign to Improve Assisted Living” is a coalition including the Service Employees International Union, caregivers, residents, their families and others described as senior advocates. According to the coalition’s web site, www.improveassistedliving.org, “when homes fail to live up to their promises” of providing high quality, safe housing and services at a price that represents good value, “we need to unite to make sure the companies that run them are held accountable.”

The coalition is asking employees of assisted-living communities, along with residents and their families to use the web site to reveal instances of inadequate training, low morale, high turnover and violations of standards and regulations.

Besides the Union, coalition members include the Older Women’s League, Gray Panthers and Interfaith Worker Justice.

As the Service Employees International Union continues its focus on organizing senior living and other kinds of healthcare, Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards is the first to take the SEIU up on its invitation to presidential candidates to work a shift in a nursing home or other kind of health facility … the Associated Press was among those covering his early morning efforts at the Sarah Neuman Nursing Home in Mamaroneck, NY.