Spotlight on Union RNs

[-jt]

Spotlight on Union RNs

Staff nurses around the country are changing nursing for the better

For Stanna Laprath and her fellow RNs and MSWs, it came down to respect.

Management at St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane, Wash., ruled with an iron fist. It allowed nursing positions to disappear through attrition, refused to recognize the seniority of nurses from other facilities who came to St. Luke's through a merger process, based patient/staff ratios on finances, not the needs of the patients and, at the end of a fiscal quarter, sent staff home on "excused absences" rather than pay salaries.

And disciplinary actions were handled entirely "at manager's discretion."

In February 2002, the nearly 70 staff members voted to form a union with the Washington State Nurses Association, a member of the United American Nurses (UAN) - the national union for RNs.

"The biggest obstacle we faced is that we had no process for providing input" on management's decisions," Laprath says. "Over time, we decided enough was enough-and called WSNA because we wanted 'nurses for nurses' . . . we wanted a nurses union representing us."

"Not everything changed once we began organizing," she says. "In fact, the day before the election, management fired three RNs. But they did begin to sit up and take notice that we were going to be organized....Then we gradually got things like a Nurse Practice Committee."

The successful election moved the process forward with management, starting with contract negotiations.

"Now we have a process to work on our problems," Laprath notes. "Our biggest challenge is educating the nurses on what we can work for in our contract - and educating them on such things as the ins and outs of Washington State's mandatory overtime bill and the use of an ADO form, for instance."

St. Luke's nurses are seeking a real disciplinary policy with Weinberg Rights, established guidelines on the delegation of tasks to nurses' aides and a policy for respectful behavior toward nurses.

"We'll get to wages and benefits," she says. "But first we want some basic respect.

"Since we've been in negotiations, I think we've put management on notice that we mean to keep this union and make it work," Laprath says. "The nurses are less fearful now of being retaliated against for speaking up." Nurses there are in the process of negotiating their first contract.

The ability to go to management and say "you can't do that - and if you continue, we're going to call you on it has made all the difference in the world", she says.

Organizing a union is a labor of love-and a job rife with pitfalls.

Lori Gay, RN is a veteran navigator on the road to a union after campaigning for nearly two years at the Salt Lake (Utah) Regional Medical Center. Gay's efforts, along with those of her 200 fellow RNs, to gain a voice at the workplace and a real say in decision making that affects patients and staff culminated in a National Labor Relations Board election in June 2002. The nurses voted to unionize with the national RN union, the United American Nurses (UAN).

The medical center appealed the vote and those ballots remain uncounted pending NLRB action. In the meantime, community organizations, local unions, religious groups and political allies are pitching in on behalf of the RNs to convince Iasis Healthcare Corp., owners of the facility, to end their opposition to the nurses and let them begin to build their union.

"We're waiting, but we're confident of the outcome," Gay says. "The nurses at the Medical Center [have] decided that we've gone long enough without a real voice in our workplace, and we will succeed.

"Iasis bought the facility nearly four years ago and changed it to a for-profit status. Immediately, things changed. There were staffing cutbacks, leaving floor nurses with too many patients and too much to do. There were new managers every three to six months.Patient care and staffing issues were our No. 1 complaint," Gay says.

"Then management started cutting into nurses' health benefits and leave time. Iasis took away one week of our vacation time when they came! "She also noted that nurses with seniority - 25 years' worth in some cases - no longer were rewarded for their time in service, leading to problems with nurse retention."We got tired of it," she says. "So we decided to stop complaining and do something about it. We called The United American Nurses (UAN).

"Once the campaign started, it really took off like wildfire. Nurses felt empowered," Gay says. In typical fashion, the hospital responded with the usual obstacles to organizing - such as "voluntary" meetings at which nurses were shown videos of people getting beaten up on the picket lines and showdowns with three lawyers and two union-busting firms.

Gay says the nurses easily filled up the "checklist of management tactics" that is part of the organizer's handbook. The nurses' committee responded with an education effort so that members would know beyond all doubt that the RNs are the union and they call the shots.

A defining moment in the campaign came when management fired two of the RNs who had started the union effort-galvanizing nurses against the hospital. "I've been a nurse for 16 years, but I've never been a part of a union - although other nurses in my hospital have," Gay says.

"Throughout it all, I've been impressed by what we can do when we unite."We're so busy and so short-staffed, sometimes we don't think outside the box. But forming a union has, in turn, formed a community at my hospital, and it's opened our eyes to what else is out there."

VA nurses making a difference .

Veterans Affairs psychiatric nurse Deanna Jones, RN of Denver, Colorado says "Our nurses have gone for too long without a real say in important management decisions that affect us. Like lots of hospital managers, the federal government is in the process of cutting services and scaling back-eliminating jobs, contracting out veterans' medical care to private providers, talking of attaching our facility to a private university, making decisions and telling us after the fact."That inspired a lot of fear in the nurses as to what will happen to us." So, they called the United American Nurses.

Jones worked non-union for nearly four decades--but she's glad to have the United American Nurses at her side now. "I never really supported unions," Jones says. "But with the situation we have in VA facilities right now, it is clear to me that nurses want a union-and we need a union."

The efforts of Jones and her 275 fellow nurses at the Denver VA Medical Center to choose UAN paid off in July 2002 with a representation election victory. The Denver VA nurses joined nearly 6,000 other VA nurses in the UAN.

"We chose UAN because our nurses want a professional union made up of staff nurses like us, who understand the unique nursing issues we deal with every day," says Jones, who worked as a med-surg nurse, intensive care nurse, head nurse and nursing supervisor before becoming a psych nurse.

The issues for Jones and her colleagues are commonly faced by nurses nationwide--job security and benefits security, a voice in hospital decision-making and control over staffing levels.

She says support from the Colorado Nurses Association and UAN helped the nurses stay together and vote for the union."Once our campaign got off the ground and our vote came closer, we had visits from UAN staff, other UAN VA nurses, UAN Vice President Ann Converso, RN..... I began to realize the amazing level of nurse support we had from UAN," Jones says.

That support--and the link to other RNs facing the same problems Deanna Jones and her colleagues are-was key to the Denver VA nurses' choice to go with UAN. Denver VA nurses knew they needed to connect with the nursing community and nurses around the country, says Jones, who points out the 100,000 RN-strong UAN comes through for them.

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http://www.UANnurse.org

[-jt]

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."

###

http://www.UANnurse.org

[pickledpepperRN]

Originally posted by -jt

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."

###

http://www.UANnurse.org

I feel proud of nurses willing to do this for the patients and our profession.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

closing for time out review.

3/24/06: reopening: please allow this thread to be:

spotlight on union rns

informing our bb members about why nurses chose to become involved in a nursing union.

pros and cons re joining a union is located other thread.

nursing unions-what is the good,bad, ugly?

thanks.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

[color=#3b87bc]

the [color=#a0c1ba]torch [color=#3b87bc]has [color=#3b87bc]passed

the story of martese chism rn:

what inspired her activism and helped her move cook county union from under ina to nnoc umbrella: desire for universal healthcare.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

[color=#3366cc]cheryl l. johnson, rn

win's ana's 2002

[color=#3366cc]mary ellen patton staff nurse leadership award

for significant contributions to the advancement of staff nurses and improvement for their general welfare and demonstrated leadership in the nursing profession

cheryl l. johnson is a champion for patients and staff nurses -- a tireless advocate for patient safety, safe working environments, equitable pay and recognition for the value of the professional staff nurse. johnson has been active at the local, state and national level, holding numerous key positions including chapter president and vice president of the michigan nurses association. she was instrumental in the creation and ongoing success of the united american nurses (uan), afl-cio, the labor arm of ana. serving as the first uan chairperson, johnson's leadership resulted in a successful affiliation with the afl-cio, where she brings the voice of nursing to outside labor groups. by working full-time in critical care while serving as uan chairperson, johnson has remained grounded in the realities of staff nurses' work environment. patients, coworkers and managers alike describe her as "dedicated," "caring" and "exceptional in her delivery of patient care." patients and families have remarked about her willingness to "take time to explain and listen" and her compassion. johnson has demonstrated experience in direct patient care and is highly skilled in teaching, mentoring and role modeling professional involvement. and because of her ongoing leadership and advocacy, professional staff nurses will achieve their rightful place in the health care system.

http://www.nursingworld.org/tan/mayjun02/awards.htm

more on cheryl's activites at uan:cheryl l. johnson, rn

nurse leaders make strong showing on 100 most powerful people in healthcare list

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Shaping VA Nursing at it's highest level: Ann Converso

In her 30-plus years as an acute medical/surgical and later I.V. therapy nurse at the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center (later the VA of Western New York Health Systems), Ann Converso has been an active and articulate voice for her veteran patients and the staff nurses around the country who provide bedside care every day.

Converso's election to the position of vice president of the United American Nurses, AFL-CIO, in 1999 was a culmination of years of hard work to build a national union for staff nurses within the American Nurses Association. As UAN's vice president, she represents the interests and agenda of UAN's 100,000 staff nurse members nationwide. In 2000, Converso was part of the UAN executive leadership team that paved the way for UAN's historic affiliation with the AFL-CIO.

Converso has been an especially powerful advocate for staff nurses in the VA health care system. She has used her seat on the National VA Partnership Council, the forum for federal labor unions and top VA management, to speak out strongly on the need to improve working conditions in VA facilities in order to attract and retain registered nurses in the federal system. In May 2001, Converso was appointed by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi to the staff nurse seat on the National Commission on VA Nurses, which shapes the direction of VA nursing at the highest levels.

Converso's union work began and continues at the local level, where she is chair of her local bargaining unit, and a past president of New York State Nurse's Association's Local District 1. As past chair of the Delegate Assembly of unionized staff nurses, Converso helped lead the push for state legislation promoting needlestick prevention and banning mandatory overtime.

Info from 2006 UAN list of officers:

http://www.uannurse.org/officers.htm

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

staff nurses as leaders