union pro or con

Definitely "Pro" union, with the caveat, that the union is both a professional association and a labor organization. I am a member of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, which is a union that represents only direct care Registered Nurses. Our union leadership is democratically elected and the Board of Directors are all direct care RNs. As members of a professional organization, we monitor and evaluate RN working conditions and the environment of care.

At times it is necessary to take our advocacy beyond the walls of the facilities where we work. Whether it is providing testimony at public hearings, or reporting hospital violations of licensing and patient safety laws, we are protected from unfair retaliation by recalcitrant employers. Collectively, with a unified union voice we are able to initiate actions that are necessary to protect patient safety and public health, like mobilizing to win and defend historic safe staffing laws, or forming the RN Response Network to send registered nurses to hospitals and clinics in the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina.

We are committed to exposing and removing corporate barriers to patient advocacy, and our ability to provide safe, therapeutic, and competent care to our patients. Direct care RNs have unique, legal accountability for the provision of patient care. CNA/NNOC provides us with the protections and the resources to transform the current health care system that puts the corporate bottom line ahead of the best interests of our patients.

I have been an RN for over 34 years, and to me, nursing is a profession, a vocation, and an exciting and honorable way to earn a living. My colleagues and I spent a few years organizing and building our union at the facility where we work. We met with representatives of a couple of smaller unions and did our homework before making that most important decision: which union best represents its collective membership and adheres to and supports the highest legal and professional standards of patient care? Unfortunately, we found that other unions would have encumbered and interfered with our duty and our right to be patient advocates because they either believed in partnerships with management, aligning themselves with corporate restructuring schemes, and/or they represented a majority of unlicensed service workers with competing and conflicting interests and accountabilities.

Most of my career has been as a non-union RN, but like so many direct care nurses, I was disturbed by dangerous and insidious changes in health care delivery that took control of the environment of care out of the hands of direct care providers. With health care restructuring, lean and mean assembly line/industrial models of care were substituted for proven professional care models. Patients weren't getting the care they deserved and good nurses left the profession as a result of the erosion of professional standards. Many executive nurses aligned themselves with management interests and are complicit in the process that ultimately deskills the profession. They "embrace" and became "champions" of change for change sake and in the process, give up their moral legacy and authority to speak on behalf of the profession.

The most important deciding factor in choosing CNA/NNOC, is the fact that they protect and defend the duty and the right of registered nurses to act in the exclusive interest of patients. We take our practice act seriously, and in the California Code of Regulations, the law states that the competent RN acts as the patient's advocate, "as circumstances require by initiating action to improve healthcare or to change decisions or activities which are against the interests or wishes" of the patient. One of the most important functions of the union is to provide justice on the job.

We won the right to be represented by CNA/NNOC and the past several years of membership have been the most rewarding, significant, and meaningful years of my chosen life's work of nursing practice and patient advocacy. There's an old Native American proverb that states, "As individual fingers we are easily broken, but together we form a mighty and powerful fist." Definitely, CNA/NNOC for me. Pro-nurse, pro-patient! A voice for nurses and a vision for health care.
www.GuaranteedHealthcare.org

This is an interesting thread. I am a union nurse and glad of it. Yesterday, i spoke with my state union rep. He was telling me that another hospital in my state which is non union simply dumped their retirement plan. The nurses who have been there for 30 plus years and ready to retire...have nothing. Absolutely nothing. They worked all those years for that. If they would have had a union, that retirement plan would have been protected under the contract and would have been renegotiated with each renewel. Don't think your non union hospital can't do things like this. It happened to a hospital in my state and it can happen to a hospital in yours.

I guess whenever it comes to union pro or con, the answer is... it depends. The basic idea is that any type of organization is only as good as it's members. I can understand some people don't like to be active in "office politics" whether that's as a union or just shared governance (without the legal backup of a labor union).
It's interesting to me an as an active participant it's always the 20% who do the work for the whole. I hope that no matter how you like to work it, you are involved in decisions that affect patient care. If you would like a legal contract that binds the employer to an agreement to work towards quality care - call in a union.
And nurse unions are all different in the ways they operate. We are a different profession now than we were even ten years ago. The nursing shortage is coming closer to being resolved, the economy is in the tank, and national healthcare is on it's way. We will need to figure out how to work towards one goal :Better patient care. Our mortality rates are ridiculous, and we need to get over ourselves. Change from me to we. I choose to do my work & my vocation with my union. Everyone in our union, from the executive leaders down are nurses & I know that nurses can make change together because our nursing union is good at training other nurses to speak up for themselves & their patients.
Nurses need to stand up for each other we can't depend on others to do it for us. And pooling our money together to pay for scholarships, trainings, and people to negotiate my benefits (so I can concentrate on improving my practice) is worth it to me.

CNA/NNOC History Video - "Taking Care; CNA's first 100 Years"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GhJ1...e=channel_page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdKhl...eature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yJy3...eature=related

I support unions because in the ten years that I have been a nurse I have witnessed decision after decision made almost exclusively based on budget and cost. Patient safety is second and when you advocate for your patients and your profession you are labeled a troublemaker. I have been a manager and have seen the other side and came away ashamed of our administrators and leaders.

Unions are as stated in prior post only as good as their members but they at least offer a binding contract and a voice at the table for nursing.

HCA in Nashville, TN has recently informed their nursing staff that they will be making the following changes in pay.

·there will be NO raises this year. (Raises are between 2-3%; never over 3% and 50% of that raise is withheld for 6 months. In other words if you receive a 2% raise annually, you are given 1% in January and 6 months later you get the other 1% added, saving HCA the cost of paying you for half of your annual raise. Now RNs will not even get that).

·The 4 hour night shift differential is being taken away from the day shift nurses. (were being paid a shift differential of $3.50/hr from 3-7pm) That’s about a 2,200 dollar a year pay cut for full time day nurses.

·Holiday pay is being decreased from $6.00/hr to $5.00/hr. (You may recall that last year they decided to cut off holiday pay at midnight. Exp: if you work Christmas day on the night shift, you get holiday pay from 7p-midnight, and since Christmas Day officially ends at midnight, you don’t get paid that holiday pay for the rest of your shift even though you missed sharing it with your family)

This is while the big wigs are taking in more and more profit. Read the following article and see for your self. http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2008/12/19/hca_execs_clear_millions_is_options_transactions with a contract the pay cuts would not be possible.

It is unfortunate that people will not just do the right thing. We need to organize for the same reason we have laws and rules; to keep all players honest and fairly represented.

Thanks Advocate for shinning a light on these corporate leeches. The public and our patients deserve to know the truth about why greed is a threat to their health, about why HCA nurses are organizing with NNOC, and why it's a social and economic imperative that we win passage of HR 676 (Conyers), so we can have a publicly accountable system of health care in this country.

Vulnerable sick and injured patients bear the brunt of the pain and suffering brought on by the market-based, profit taking practice you've described; it siphons money away from providing medicine, treatment, and RNs who care for patients. RNs have a duty to speak out and change the conditions that are against the interests of their patients. We shouldn't have to fear retaliation from unethical employers for our advocacy. Sister Agnes Karll, RN once said, "The only practical remedy for all abuses is self-organization."

One has to wonder though, (when we start seeing hospital executives exercising their stock options at the expense of the workers and patients), are the HCA bosses bailing out and manning their lifeboats, while leaving the patients and staff behind on the sinking ship of a collapsing economy?

We have a moral and ethical obligation to prevent harm. We all know how awful the current economic and health care crisis is but there is a solution as outlined in a new study just released by the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, (IHSP). Read about it here , as published in The Nation. "These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery," says Geri Jenkins, RN, Council of Presidents, CNA/National Nurses Organizing Committee. CNA/NNOC sponsored the study.

Collectively as nurses, we've done our assessment and now it's time to act on behalf of our patients by becoming active members of our union. Indeed, our lives, livelihood, and those of our compatriots depend on it.

It never ceases to amaze me, that the "martry mary nurses", continue to fight organizing their hospitals. Nurses continue to remain, naive, and gullible in the face of blatant anti worker policies by hospitals. Why nurses will not unionize to improve their working conditions, pay, and benefits, is beyond my comprehension. This is a no brainer in my book.

I only wish that I could get NNOC here in Washington State and get rid of the worthless state nursing association that we have in too many hospitals. Talk about a "company union" they are it. JMHO and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN
Spokane, Washington

Unions will never solve the problem, only add to the problem. Unions exhibit greed like anyone else. The single most important item on any strike is "PAY" everything else is just smoke.

Yeah....We should just dump our unions and send our union dues to the CEO's of our hospitals instead. I'm sure they'll take our money in good faith and make sure that we are well taken care of for such generosity.

That might actually work. Bribery has always been an effective tool. Look how well it worked in Alaskan politics. and Illinois Politics. I can be bribed.