Spotlight on Union Nurses
When a Nurse Goes On Strike
Rain, wind, sleet, snow — and sunshine — couldn’t keep Ali O’Neill and more than 1,000 other RNs off the picket line at Oregon Health and Sciences University. These union nurses are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association, a member of the United American Nurses (UAN) - the national labor union for RNs.
And those 56 days walking the line in the Oregon winter transformed the nurses into a unified, strong body of one.
"For many of us, the experience of being a part of that huge sea of solidarity will be imprinted on our brains always, an inspiration that will stay with us for the rest of our lives," O’Neill says.
Management's arrogance and ignorance during contract negotiations in late 2001 both astonished the nurses and put them on the road to unity. When
management abandoned the bargaining table one week before Christmas, nurses responded by swarming out of the hospital and onto the picket line.
Massive support from the community and brothers and sisters in the union movement bolstered the nurses throughout their fight. Longshoremen even offered to arrange jobs for the striking nurses!
But it was the daily coming together on the line that really personified the old Knights of Labor slogan "An injury to one is an injury to all" for O'Neill. For eight weeks, day in and day out, the nurses "got to know the amazing women and men we work with better than we ever had before," she says.
"The best thing about the strike was seeing nurses shed their feelings of powerlessness, isolation and apathy and take a unified stand. It no longer mattered what specific kind of nursing you did or what degree you had — on the picket line, we learned that we all need each other, and that through unity and solidarity we can achieve more than we ever imagined."
Nurses returned en masse in mid-February 2002 armed with a contract featuring raises of more than 20 percent over term—and everlasting bonds with one another. O'Neill says hospital administrators have realized the strike brought out the activist in many nurses, and that there will be "no more business as usual."
"The experience of going on strike changed me as a person forever," she says. "I did, and continue to do, so many things I had never imagined myself having the strength and courage to do….I know now that nurses united can NEVER be defeated."
Meanwhile, three thousand miles across the country, armed with e-mail addresses and her commitment to her colleagues, Barbara Crane, RN led 450 nurses through a 104-day "Red Storm" to victory at St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center in Smithtown on Long Island, NY. The nurses are unionized with the New York State Nurses Association and, as such, are also part of the UAN national RN union.
Crane's daily e-mails buoyed union members and helped hold the unit together in the face of a ferocious fight from management. She says she sometimes received 100 e-mails in a single day containing heart-wrenching stories of fear, survival, sacrifice and courage from her friends and co-workers, which she then passed on in a "web of sharing" to keep supporters up to date on the situation. Word spread among nurses throughout the country. All told, Crane sent more than 100,000 e-mails to 500 addresses of nurses and other supporters who were watching from 31 states, to let people know "WE ARE MAKING HISTORY HERE."
That history concluded in March 2002 with a new three-year contract with strict limitations on the use of forced overtime, re-established enforceable RN-to-patient staffing guidelines and provisions for retiree health coverage-three issues that drove the nurses to the picket line in November 2001.
Crane praises her colleagues for their living example of the promise of solidarity. "We came to realize that 30 percent of our bargaining unit consisted of single women with children; now we were asking them to give up their holidays for the promise of better years to come - but they did," she says.
"What inconceivable courage it took to vote 7-to-1 in favor of a strike - one month before Christmas. What a surprise it was to our administration when we stood shoulder to shoulder throughout the holiday season and on through the entire winter never losing sight of our objectives."
The biggest challenge before the strike was getting all of the unit's members in agreement on the issues. Many non-med/surg nurses had never faced mandatory overtime or unmanageable nurse-to-patient ratios, for example, so nurse unit leaders worked to make sure all of the nurses understood the situation.
As the strike went on, nurses drew on the support of each other and the community to keep up the fight. "Something amazing happened as the days turned into weeks and weeks into months," Crane says. "We became closer, stronger and smarter. We started to think with a collective mind. We shared the various options we found that worked, we shared our feelings and our fears. When someone was not heard from, we called and drew them back."
Hundreds of nurses came out for open negotiations, picket line duty, candlelight vigils, house parties and bus parties. Nurses found temporary work through nursing agencies as well as reasonably priced health insurance. The union movement stood with the nurses, including a parade with nearly 700 members of 21 other local unions that marched through Smithtown to show their support for the nurses' cause.
The nurses walked back into St. Catherine's on March 17 changed by their experience. "Many of my co-workers have found a new respect for themselves, having survived the ordeal intact," Crane says. "They aren't willing to go back to the status quo. They will ask more for themselves in terms of respect and appreciation for the jobs they do and the services we perform."
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