Getting a union

Contact the union you would like to see established. They will be happy to send an organizer to talk to you.

That is indeed correct, but a few more details are in order.

Do some research on what union you want. I'm highly partial to unions for nurses and run by nurses. Because a lot of the state nurses associations don't do collective bargaining, unions as diverse as teachers, steelworkers and teamsters have some nurse members. But I don't believe they are the best choice. Check out your state association first and find out whether they do collective bargaining. If not, do some reasearch into other states near you and find out if any of them are active enough on organizing to come into your state. Also find out if any other hospitals in your area are unionized. Find out which union is there and whether the nurses there are happy with it. Representing a unit of members takes staff time on an ongoing basis and most unions don't want to represent members far from their base and far from their other members.

How does one go about getting a union in a hospital? How do you contact them to come to your hospital to talk to everyone about getting on board? Do you have to have a letter with X amount of signatures first? Tell me all you know.

Do you currently work in a hospital? Have you talked with any of your co-workers about your rights to join and form a union? The National Nurses United (NNU), for instance, is a labor organization that represents members for the purposes of collective bargaining to win improvements in working conditions, enforceable by a contract; and, NNU is a professional association that sets standards of nursing practice and patient advocacy. One such standard is promoting and overcoming barriers to a single standard of excellent care for all.

Building a social advocacy movement to expand and improve access to Medicare for all is a hallmark of this organization. NNU is at the forefront of legislative advocacy as well; the organization has introduced "The National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act", S 1031 (Boxer), to bring enforceable, safe nurse to patient ratios, with the requirement that hospitals staff up from the minimum, based on the patient's severity of illness. It promotes and protects the rights and duty of RNs to be patient advocates by including strong whistleblower language for RNs who speak out about unsafe hospital industry policies and procedures that are potentially harmful to patients.

I recommend the book, "Why Unions Matter" by Michael Yates. It's good to have a little labor history and philosophy under your belt to better inform any further discussions on the subject.

OK folks, this is why TEACHERS GET WHAT THEY WANT!

FROM KREM 2 NEWS IN SPOKANE WASHINGTON ABOUT 10 MINUTES AGO:

krem.com

Posted on October 13, 2010 at 9:10 PM

See all 2 photos »

SPOKANE -- Hundreds of teachers packed the Spokane School District board meeting crying foul after some principals and administrative staff got raises and they did not.

It was a lesson in civil protest Wednesday night as 200 or so people filled the boardroom. They are mad about a 3% increase that was bargained by the principals union which will also affect some administration. The frustration all began with a bargained increase for principals. Their salaries would top out at a higher scale and would start at a higher scale of pay as well.

Tarren Roloff, Communications Director for District 81, said the higher pay for principals is a necessary recruiting tool. Some administrators also got the 3% increase. The crowd in the boardroom says now is not the time. Some teachers and classified staff did receive raises. But the Spokane Education Association says an administrative raise, at a time when teachers are stretched thin, is bad for morale. They hope the school board takes notice.

The Education Association will be bargaining their contract with the school district this November.

And how many years have nurses, for all of their hard work, have gone either without raises, or something ourstanding, like 1%?

Like I have said in previous posts, this is why teachers get what they want. They go right to the source, they don't mince words, and they make their voices heard!

Nurses stand in the back of the hospital's parking lots. On a Sunday afternoon. In November.

There is no one out there but the handful of union members, and maybe their husbands, for a "rally"!

There is no reportes, no TV cameras, no press, no newspapers, nothing. And you can hear the union patting themselves on the back for their "activism"!

Really? And we wonder why nursing unions get nothing for their members, but the crumbs that administration throws their way.

JMHO and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN0, BSN, CCRN

Did you ever get an answer? I have emailed National Nurses United twice now and have received NO response

Did you ever get an answer? I have emailed National Nurses United twice now and have received NO response

A couple of thoughts about the world of nurse unions, in a practical sense:

NNU is (at this point) an umbrella organization made up of state nurses associations. In general, with a few exceptions for special cases, NNU itself does not directly organize new hospitals. The member organizations do. So someone wanting to bring a union to their hospital should first look to see whether their state nurses association participates in collective bargaining. If not, the next thing would be to look at an immediate neighboring state. For example, I believe that nurses at a hospital in Iowa just voted to join the Minnesota Nurses Association. Of all the associations, the one that is most active in organizing far from its home base is CNA/NNOC, so if neither your own state or a neighboring one is involved in collective bargaining, that would be an avenue to try.

The further problem though is that there are actually a lot of nurses out there who are interested in organizing. But running an organizing campaign is very expensive for a union and there are limited staff available to do it. So there is a necessity to look at larger strategic patterns. Once you organize a hospital, you have to have staff based there to support that bargaining unit. If that's the only hospital in the area, or the only one that you have a shot at organizing, that may be prohibitively expensive to staff. You want to organize groups of hospitals in an area - which makes staffing more efficient and gives you the kind of density that lets you build power and negotiate good contracts. Also, many hospitals in the US are part of chains: the big for-profit chains, the big Catholic chains, Kaiser, etc. Unions can build power faster and more economically by organizing multiple hospitals in a chain than by organizing a bunch of independents. With limited resources to deploy, you want to put them where they will do the most good. So it's not practical to organize every hospital that theoretically could be organized. This is very frustrating to nurses that want to bring unionization to their hospitals. The next few years are going to see a massive amount of new organizing in nursing. But some places will have to wait longer than others.