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From the January-February 2009 issue of Union Democracy Review #177
Three major nurses unions unite in AFL-CIO
United American Nurses, the California Nurses Association, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association --- three big unions of registered nurses that had been independent and somewhat in competition ---- joined forces in February to form one new union that claims to represent 150,000 members. The new union, called the United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee, will be part of the labor movement as an AFL-CIO affiliate.
Its central aim, according to its statement of purposes, is to "Provide a powerful national voice for RN rights, safe RN practice, and health care justice." Toward that end it aims to "Organize all non-union direct care RNs …A substantial majority of the budget shall be dedicated to new organizing."
Of the nation's 2,500,000 registered nurses, some 550,000 are already represented by a bewildering array of different unions. With its impressively large membership, the new union can come forward as the predominant force. It may thrust to the sidelines all other unions that stake claims to nurses. It will overshadow the SEIU which seeks monopoly control over all healthcare workers, including nurses.
Many nurse unionists, scattered among the many rival groups, dream of one union, responsive to its membership, speaking with one voice on behalf of working staff nurses, united and democratic. The formation of the new union will surely be greeted as a welcome step toward that unity. How far it goes toward realizing the dream of democratic unionism will be indicated by its constitutional structure and, above all, in practice.
In their origins, the three constituents of the new union illustrate the evolution of nurses away from a narrow professionalism toward unionism and identification with the broader labor movement. Each emerged out of the American Nurses Association. The ANA has been the principal professional association of registered nurses, but non-union, even anti-union in its origin. For a time, however, in response to demand, the ANA created collective bargaining divisions in the states as collective bargaining agent of staff nurses.
The California Nurses Association, then an ANA affiliate, seceded from the ANA in 1993 because the CNA union-oriented members decided that the ANA was dominated by management types. It joined the AFL-CIO in 2006.
The United American Nurses began life as the central coordinating body for the various ANA state collective bargaining units. It lived for a time as an autonomous unit of the ANA, but was spun off in 2003 as a totally independent union, affiliated to the AFL-CIO.
The 23,000-member Massachusetts Nurses Association had been affiliated to the ANA but withdrew about ten years ago over policy differences. It remained independent until now.
Meanwhile, back at the ANA, several of its state affiliates with collective bargaining divisions are in a quandary. Earlier, for reasons not quite clear to normal observers, they had left the United American Nurses and thereby lost their affiliation with the AFL-CIO. Then, after the ANA had lost its interest in collective bargaining, they seem to have been left isolated in limbo. And so they made overtures to John Sweeney, seeking a new connection with the AFL-CIO. But Sweeney chilled their hopes in a round robin letter dated December 23 which began, "A year ago your state organization and several others disaffiliated from the United American Nurses, AFL-CIO." And it concluded, "any future participation in the AFL-CIO would have to be approved by the Executive Council [which approval] would likely only be given with the consent of UAN's leadership….The AFL-CIO will continue to work with the UAN as one of our major healthcare affiliates and provide them with as much support as we can…."
Now these ANA affiliates are on their own and subject to competition from powerful rival unions. In New York City, there are reports that the New York State Nurses Association (still part of ANA), which represents 32,000 staff nurses may face a challenge from the SEIU at the Health and Hospital Corporation when its contract covering 7,500 nurses expires. And so, the state ANA affiliates, left behind, have joined together in a newly organized National Federation of Nurses. A key force in initiating the new group is the New York State Nurses Association. But NYSNA faces a strong challenge from within its own ranks.
New York Nurses United, a rank and file caucus inside NYSNA, campaigns for democratic practices in the union. Its website is forthright in criticizing what it calls the "top-down actions" leading to the federation: "The creators of the NFN have appointed themselves to be the executive officers of this union for three years…. We had no knowledge of, or voice in, the decision to create and affiliate with the NFN. We had no input into its constitution or the selection of its officers…NYSNA has aligned itself with organizations that are against the creation of nurse staffing ratios…." (Nurse unionists call for strict limitations on the number of patients a nurse must serve. Management types resist restrictions.)
It should be obvious, even from this account, that the state of nurses’ unionism remains wrapped in confusion. However, the formation of the new 150,000-member AFL-CIO union may help bring it into focus.
See also:
Nurses
ask court to back rights in NYS Association
Four
state nurses associations quit AFL-CIO union
New York
Nurses battle over union ties
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