State Nurses' Association

Chico David, BSN, RN · Feb 21, 2012

What are the pros and cons of having State Nurses' Association as bargaining agent?
Are the advantage greater than the disadvantages? Or is it the other way around?
Please guys I need your thoughts on this! I need to write a paper on this topic and I ran out of ideas!
Thanks!

So I'll take pity on the poor student and try to help:

First, complicated subject.

All the below is my opinion - coming from the perspective of someone very involved in a state association that does do collective bargaining.

Some state nurses associations choose to do collective bargaining - that is they act as both professional association and union. The most prominent and largest are California (by far the biggest)New York, Massachusetts. Many state associations are only professional societies and don't do any collective bargaining at all. They tend to be dominated by managers and academic nurses and don't necessarily have the same interests as staff nurses - they tend to ally with the interests of management rather than the needs of working nurses. Some state associations that do collective bargaining do a good job representing nurses, others don't do it so well.

Because some states don't do it at all and other states do it poorly, that has left a void that has been filled in some cases by other types of unions coming in to represent nurses. Nurses in various places are represented by unions of Steelworkers, Teamsters, Laborers, Service Employees, Teachers and other unions. I have a bias that the needs of nurses are best met by unions just for nurses with nurses in top leadership positions.

As nurses leading a nurses union we can speak with a strong moral authority and avoid the kind of conflicting needs that some other unions run into when they represent nurses.

For more info, I'd try doing online searches into the websites of and discussions about the California, New York and Massachusetts associations and the National Nurses United.