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Soon after Valentine’s Day, some RNs across America made what they believe is a sweetheart of a deal.



The United American Nurses (UAN), California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA-NNOC), and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) joined together to form a new 150,000-member strong association to ramp up unionization efforts across the country.



The combined association – United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee, better known as UAN-NNOC (AFL-CIO) – was officially established to achieve five missions: to build an RN movement “to defend and advance” the interests of direct care nurses, to organize all non-union direct care RNs, to provide a strong national voice for RN rights and safe RN practice including RN-to-patient staffing ratios, to provide a vehicle for solidarity with sister nurse and allied organizations worldwide, and to create a national Taft-Hartley pension for union RNs. Overall, improving nurse-to-patient ratios has been the uniting rallying cry for RNs.





Different Path



The collaboration evolved after the MNA, CNA and UAN broke away from the American Nurses Association (ANA), the largest, most diverse nursing organization in the country, representing 180,000 RNs.



“We need to have a national voice,” said MNA president Mary Beth Piknick, whose 23,000 members collectively have 85 contracts with healthcare facilities across Massachusetts. “We’ve been talking about this for a long time since we left the American Nurses Association (in 2001).”



The primary difference in opinion between the ANA and the MNA involves mandatory nurse-patient staffing ratios in hospitals, with the latter group taking a strong stance for a ratio requirement in the state.



“We have to have RNs speaking for RNs because we’re a unique profession,” said Piknick, also a nurse at Cape Cod Hospital. “We feel our profession is under attack and because of that, patients are suffering, and for us it’s all about the patients. This is a group of like-minded organizations that will advocate for (RN unionization). Each group will retain its identity.”



At press time, staff changes were not anticipated, but the possibility of staff members being placed in roles with a national scope had been discussed.



“One thing we’re not interested in doing is creating another layer of bureaucracy,” said MNA executive director Julie Pinkham.





Resistance



Not everyone is enthusiastic about the move. In March, nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston became the first hospital in Texas to vote to unionize. Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., the nation's third-largest publicly traded hospital system, owns the medical center.



The Houston vote could signal similar union votes. Under Tenet's agreement with the unions, nurses at the company's Dallas-based hospitals cannot vote to form a union until 2010.



"We’re surprised at the merger and will be working with representatives to discuss how this announcement affects our current agreement," said Tenet spokesperson David Matthews. "As always, Tenet believes it would be best to work with our employees without the involvement of a union."



Fernando Losada, the union's collective bargaining director responsible for Texas, believes “this new uniting of nursing organizations will help us.”



"We have an aggressive organizing program throughout Texas," said Losada, who echoed MNA’s concern about pushing for better nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.



Joan Clark, chief nurse executive for Arlington-based Texas Health Resources Inc., the largest hospital system in North Texas, said the movement “has been slowly escalating.” Yet Rosemary Luquire, chief nursing officer at Baylor Health Care System, isn’t threatened by the move. “We have a culture that empowers nurses to be involved in decision-making at the unit, hospital and system level,” she explained.





More to Come



UAN president Ann Converso said uniting the new association is "the first step" in uniting all staff nurses in the UAN-NNOC national nurses union.



Among its many priorities, the newly formed organization (UAN-NNOC) will establish a unified legislative and regulatory program to win critical improvements in patient care and working conditions for RNs, said CNA-NNOC executive director Rose Ann DeMoro.



One of the inaugural public moves the UAN-NNOC made occurred in early March, just before the national healthcare summit took place. Association leaders asked for support in telling President Obama “that expanding and updating Medicare to cover everyone is the most cost-effective and comprehensive approach to achieving the goals and principles outlined in his recent address to Congress and budget proposal.”



DeMoro said the new association will also provide nationwide coordination in the campaign for single-payer healthcare, as the proposal is taken up in Congress.

Tags:

AFL-CIO, American Nurses Association, ANA, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, CNA-NNOC, Massachusetts Nurses Association, MNA, SEIU, Service Employees International Union, UAN, UAN-NNOC, United American Nurses, United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee

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