Providence Hospital RNs vote to unionize

[Mindful, RN]

Washington DC ...

Registered nurses at Providence Hospital in Northeast D.C. have voted to join an arm of National Nurses United, the aggressive labor union that's become a political and bargaining force in the District since 2010.

Union officials said nurses voted 232 to 66 on Tuesday to join the California-based union's organizing committee, which the union says is the first successful vote to organize at a non-union D.C. hospital in "decades."

www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/2013/12/providence-hospital-nurses-unionize.html

[nightbreak]

Congratulations Providence nurses! A great move for nurse and patient safety. Good luck with negotiating your contract!

[henriksen13]

Sorry that you made a radical choice and were sold a bill of goods from labor leaders. Unions are nothing more than a false sense of security. Their real interests are for their pocketbooks not the nurses or the patients. Nurses do not need unions. We are well educated, intelligent, hardworking professionals who can come together to change the practice environment without paying union leaders. They can't do anymore than we can do for ourselves. What a shame Providence. You got sucked into the political arena. Nurse Advocacy Association - Welcome to NAA is the answer.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Sorry that you made a radical choice and were sold a bill of goods from labor leaders. Unions are nothing more than a false sense of security. Their real interests are for their pocketbooks not the nurses or the patients. Nurses do not need unions. We are well educated, intelligent, hardworking professionals who can come together to change the practice environment without paying union leaders. They can't do anymore than we can do for ourselves. What a shame Providence. You got sucked into the political arena. Nurse Advocacy Association - Welcome to NAA is the answer.

The NAA site honors Lavinia Dock who in 1913 spoke at ANA convention urging nurses to support the union movement.

Nurses should have listened to her. She was a true visionary and leader.

AAHN Gravesites of Prominent Nurses - Dock

Of course nurses are in the political arena. Our license to practice is issued by the state. Nurses are citizens and have the right to influence their elected leaders. The Providence nurses voted 232 to 66 to join National Nurses United.

They called the union because they did not have either sufficient nursing staff or equipment and nurses were not respected.

National Nurses United is the union that achieved the safe staffing by acuity with the ratio as the minimum core staffing in California.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Registered nurses vote to unionize at Providence Hospital in D.C.

... Carl Ginsburg, a spokesman for National Nurses United, said he expected the staffing bill to get "greater consideration" from lawmakers in light of the union vote, which was 232 to 66.

"Nurses from Providence have already testified about staffing shortcomings, pronounced staffing shortcomings" jeopardizing patient care, he said. "They have been forthright in their demand that a new safe staffing law be passed in the District."

But several key D.C. Council members are opposed to the bill-including, crucially, Yvette M. Alexander, who chairs the Health Committee -and there is little immediate prospect of its becoming law. ...

Registered nurses vote to unionize at Providence Hospital in D.C. - The Washington Post

Hospital executives held a fundraiser for the chair of the D.C. City Council Health Committee.

Nurses are respected by the public. Nurses vote. Will nurse advocacy or executive campaign money prevail?

Yvette Alexander, chair of the Health Committee, has refused to hold a hearing on the bill for more than 8 months, after claiming to support it. Perhaps the fundraiser thrown for Ms. Alexander by hospital executives suggests why she's been reluctant to schedule a hearing....