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From the March-April 2009 issue of Union Democracy Review #178
Nurses now for sale, barter and trade
By Herman Benson
By combining into a new 150,000-member national union affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the California Nurses Association, the United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association seemed to have taken a giant step toward creating the kind of united force so many nurse unionists are hoping for. Meanwhile, the move has triggered a swift and dizzying realignment among the many unions that aspire to represent registered nurses. Most notable and unexpected is the sudden love affair between top officials of the Service Employees and the California Nurses Association. From bitter competition over who shall represent nurses, they have shifted to an amicable agreement over dividing up the territory.
It was not long ago that the SEIU denounced the CNA as a union-wrecking enemy and mobilized members to disrupt public meetings where CNA spokespersons were scheduled to speak. The CNA, in turn, accused the SEIU of sweetheart dealings with employers and called upon nurses to vote against it in an NLRB collective bargaining election. But on March 18, according to The New York Times, the two unions agreed to conduct a joint campaign to organize big hospitals and split the gains. Some registered nurses will go to the CNA; other, ancillary, hospital workers go to the SEIU.
In Nevada, the really big nurse-trading began, leaving nurses on both sides feeling like bartered chips. Just a few days before, the SEIU had been under heavy assault from the CNA. In 2007, the CNA ousted the SEIU as representative of 500 nurses at St. Mary's Center in Reno. Later it out-polled the SEIU among 1,100 nurses at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Las Vegas but failed by only 3 votes to win an NLRB majority when 26 voted no-union. In the rerun, the SEIU pulled ahead by only 2 votes, 392-390. Meanwhile, the CNA was mounting a strong challenge at the University Medical Center in Las Vegas where discontent with the SEIU was rampant. But all that was patched over by the new mutual assistance pact.
The SEIU agreed to remain neutral during a new NLRB vote at St. Rose, and so the vote went passively by 409 to 135 for CNA. In return in Las Vegas, CNA walked away from the 1,300 nurses at University Medical Center, abandoning its many supporters to the SEIU, and from the 800 nurses at Sunrise Hospital, where it had just begun to campaign. Nurses who supported the CNA only to be traded over to the SEIU were not simply disappointed, they were outraged at what they felt was betrayal. The same was true for SEIU nurses traded over to CNA.
The two unions will organize jointly, nurses going to the CNA, and ancillary staff to the SEIU. In Florida, the two unions will create a local of registered nurses that will affiliate to both the CNA and the SEIU. (There is a precedent for that kind of joint affiliation. In New York, the 50,000-member Public Employees Federation is jointly affiliated to both the SEIU and the American Federation of Teachers. That arrangement seems to have provided some minor moral support for SEIU President Andy Stern in his takeover of UHW-W, the 150,000-member healthcare local in California. The PEF president was among the 47 SEIU officers who provided a PR cover for Stern's drive to trustee that local.)
For Andy Stern, the pact seems to be a realistic recognition of the growing power of the CNA which is now entrenched in the new 150,000-member AFL-CIO nurses union. The SEIU is said to represent some 85,000 registered nurses. By agreeing to turn newly organized nurses over to the CNA, he has, in effect, abandoned the SEIU imperial claim to monopoly jurisdictional rights over all healthcare workers ---at least temporarily. For the CNA, the agreement is public recognition of its growing power and influence and an opportunity to add even more strength to its 80,000-membership.
One question remains. The CNA itself had just joined with two big partners in a major new union. Where were the other two when this pact was negotiated?
A second new union: NFN
Meanwhile, in January, nurses associations in eight states announced that they had joined together in forming a new independent union, the National Federation of Nurses. All had been affiliated to the American Nurses Association as separate collective bargaining units, but the ANA has lost interest in unionism; it has now reverted to what it was in 1911 when it was founded - a nonunion professional association of registered nurses, dominated by management and administrative personnel. For decades it was hostile to unionism, but in the 1940s, under the pressure of working hospital staff nurses, it set up separate units in the states for collective bargaining. But recently, the ANA lost interest in collective bargaining and completely abandoned the union business. (After a long nurses strike in Kentucky, the ANA simply dropped the state union from its rolls.) And so, the state nurses associations in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington found themselves individually orphaned, abandoned, and subject to raiding by more powerful rivals in the AFL-CIO and SEIU. In self defense, they joined forces with the new National Federation of Nurses, that claims to represent 75,000 nurses.
The new union faces the bewildering world of evolving nurse unionism. The eight unions in the new NFN had all been affiliated with the United American Nurses, but in December 2007, they seceded and thereby lost their AFL-CIO connections. Why the split off? At the time, they seem to have resented the UAN organizational setup and objected to its cooperative relations with the SEIU. Only 15 months ago, they were motivated by a dislike of both the UAN and the SEIU; and they left the AFL-CIO.
Now, in announcing their own new NFN union, they still refer defensively to the "Threat of SEIU affiliation," but they want to "become part of the house of labor" and secure "raid protection" by AFL-CIO affiliation. Their problem is that John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, is cold to their application.
The formation of the big new AFL-CIO nurses union has complicated the plans and hopes of the NFN. The Oregon Nurses Association, one of the eight NFN founders, writes that "ONA is paying careful attention to development" and adds very tentatively that "It is possible that ONA and other state nursing associations will find common ground with the new organization." That organization, we recall, includes the United American Nurses, which the Oregon Nurses left in disgust those few months ago.
The New York State Nurses Association, a prime founder of the NFN, may face serious disappointment. According to some reports, officers of NYSNA had been privately working toward rapprochement with the California Nurses. On the popular theory that an enemy of my enemy is my friend, such an alliance could offer a protective buffer against the SEIU. But that hope is being dashed as the California Nurses unites with the UAN and cultivates close cooperation with the SEIU.
Such is life among nurses unions today. Out of these puzzling crisscrossing murky events, some things do stand out clearly: Three big unions have agreed to unite in one powerful nurses union; the destructive feud between CNA and SEIU has been resolved by a truce, at least for the moment; eight nurses associations, with a combined membership of tens of thousands, do see the need for joint action in the house of labor. In all this, nurses see progress toward the long cherished ideal of one united union speaking powerfully on behalf of working bedside nurses.
But many nurse unionists have been striving for more than united unionism; they hope for united democratic unionism. From that standpoint, these events leave many questions open. Whatever has been achieved has come suddenly and without warning because everything has been decided by private deals among top official participants. No one knows the precise future shape of these new organizations. Only those who were there at the maneuvering and bargaining can know the reservations and full motivation of the participants and what they have in mind, if anything, for preserving the right of nurses to control their own organizations. Spokespersons for the eight-union new National Federation of Nurses write that they have been concerned with preserving the autonomous rights of the affiliates of any new union. I f they are serious in their concern, it could be a welcome counterbalance to the drive by Andy Stern and others toward authoritarian centralization in the rising new labor movement. Recent events in the New York State Nurses Association may give us a hint of problems ahead.
In NYSNA
The New York State Nurses Association [NYSNA], which represents some 32,000 staff nurses in the state, was a prime mover in initiating the new eight-union National Federation of Nurses. Barbara Crane stepped down as president of its collective bargaining unit to take over as president of the new union. In assuming her new post, she wrote that the NFN "will be committed to the autonomy and self-governance of each of its member nurses' labor organization." The trouble is that this forthright assertion of autonomous rights for state affiliates loses some of its glow when compared with the uncertain state of membership democratic rights within NYSNA itself. An independent caucus within NYSNA, New York Nurses for Unity, insists that defense of the autonomy of the state affiliates should be coupled with a clear assertion and practice of democratic rights for the nurse members within those affiliates.
In December 2007, the NYSNA Board of Directors took the union out of the United American Nurses, even though in an advisory referendum its members had voted earlier against disaffiliation. Disciplinary charges were filed against twenty-three nurses who had campaigned vigorously to remain in the UAN; the administration denounced them in letters to the entire membership. But the NYSNA leadership was forced to back down when three of the designated victims filed suit in federal court. In February this year, Federal Judge Loretta Preska announced that a settlement had been reached. Even before the case got to the judge, the disciplinary charges had been dismissed within the union. But the victims sought recourse against the continuing campaign of vilification, and that's what they finally won in court. The critics won the right to express their view and distribute handbills at the union's 2009 convention. Their caucus will prepare a 400-word statement of their views to be published in the NYSNA magazine and on its website. Two of the caucus supporters will participate on a four-person panel discussion at the convention. NYSNA will reprint the U.S. Labor Department poster "Union Members Know Your Rights." Their lawyer will receive a $25,000 fee reimbursement. A clear victory for democracy, but it required an extended suit in federal court.
At this point, the goal of democratic nurses' unionism is most explicitly expressed by the New York Nurses United, the independent caucus within NYSNA. Commenting on the formation of the National Federation of Nurses, the group's website wrote, "The new union's constitution has been written and its officers have been appointed without the knowledge or consent of the membership. Yet our leadership claims this new union to value democracy, inclusiveness, and transparency as its guiding principle!" In an appeal for support, they said, "We believe that our organization must be member driven and function in a democratic transparent manner….Only then will we be able to fully realize the collective power of our membership."
More
resources on Change to Win and SEIU:
See Benson's
Union Democracy Blog for several articles
Stern
Employees International Union
Reflections
on the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico
Andy
Stern is slipping off the pedestal
SEIU
needs a public review board
On
the eve of the SEIU Convention
Opposition
wins most delegates from big SEIU local
Fight
in Ohio between SEIU and California Nurses revives old issue: When employers
welcome unions at the NLRB
On
"democratic" centralism: Stern's illusion and democracy's nightmare
Healthcare
leader raps Stern; quits SEIU board
SEIU
rearranges 600,000 into mega locals
Debate
on Union Democracy and Change to Win
If
you can't woo 'em, sue 'em! An ingenious twist in punishing dissent in the SEIU
SEIU's Unite to Win blog reviewed.
Local
509 asks questions about democracy in the SEIU
New Unity Partnership:Sweeney
Critics would bureaucratize to organize.
Service Employees: Mass. merger
in Local 888.
Benson's Union
Democracy blog.
Student
Labor Activists support union democracy.
Articles
on the Labor Notes site on NUP from various sources.
See UDR articles on
the Carpenters (UBCJA) for case studies in merger and bureaucratization.
Several articles on the New Unity Partnership are available on the BC
Carpenters website.
Find articles on the consolidation
of power in the Carpenters union on the main UDR page.
An exchange
on union democracy between Herman Benson and Steve Fraser, on the Laborers.org
website (click on Fraser's name for a link to his article)
Links to rank-and-file websites in the NUP unions: Carpenters,
Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Laborers, Needle Trades (UNITE), Service Employees
(building services, public employees).
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