Fifty healthcare professionals from Overton Brooks Department of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center outpatient clinic in Longview, TX recently voted overwhelmingly to join the IAM. The successful campaign was the third and final piece of an organizing project for Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCS).
The CBOCS project, which began last year for more than 150 healthcare professionals, also successfully organized groups in Texarkana, TX and Monroe, LA. The three CBOCS service more than 462,000 veterans annually.
“I am appreciative that we were able to guide and educate this group of healthcare Professionals to their goal of unionizing,” said IAM Grand Lodge Representative Juan Eldridge, lead organizer on the campaign. “They were ready to gain our representation, grievance procedure and supplemental benefits as well as the protections from working under our master contract agreement that we already have in place with the Shreveport, Louisiana Medical Center.”
“I want to welcome our newest healthcare members into the IAM and thank them for their unrelenting support throughout the process,” said IAM Organizing Director Vinny Addeo. “I thank Grand Lodge Representative Juan Eldridge for leading this campaign, Special Representative Chris Casteel for his assistance and all the Organizing Department staff for bringing this campaign to fruition. The CBOCS Organizing Project was for three locations and took time and resources, but our department never wavered in its conviction to help these workers form a union with the Machinists.”
This group of healthcare professionals, covering more than 10 counties in East Texas, includes doctors, registered nurses, pharmacists, audiologists, licensed professional counselors and licensed social workers.