A unionizing campaign has been quietly under way for about two years at Legacy Health System.

Portland-headquartered Legacy has five hospitals and various other facilities in Oregon and Southwest Washington, and employs 3,000 registered nurses; none are represented by a union.

But the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) wants Legacy to join the growing roster of unionized hospital chains. AFT has formed a group, United Nurses of Legacy (UNL), as the embryo of a new union local. With local and national AFT bodies providing organizational support, nurses at Legacy have been working slowly to build a union organization within the workplace.

That’s a slightly unconventional strategy. Traditionally, unions blitz workers, collecting signatures in a rush. They then use those signatures to file for a government-run election; if a majority of workers vote “union yes,” the employer, legally, has to recognize and bargain with the union.

But often, management is able to use legal avenues to limit the size of the unit and delay the election, getting more time to persuade workers to reject the union. That’s what happened in an AFT campaign at Legacy Mt. Hood Medical Center in the early ‘90s, says UNL spokesperson Matthew Rae. And a campaign to unionize nurses at Good Samaritan in the late ‘70s also failed.

So AFT is looking to create an actual organization of nurses well before seeking certification as an exclusive bargaining agent.

“We’re not asking permission to be a union; we already are a union,” said Jeannette Gailey, an RN at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital.

Spokesperson Rae says so far UNL has helped nurses get results in several cases, and has been offering professional development workshops.

At the cardiology department at Legacy Emanuel Hospital, nurses and several cardiologists signed a petition protesting a decision to increase the workload and number of patients per nurse, and management rescinded the decision, Rae said.