Unite nurses, don't divide us

[klbackus]

during national nurses week and throughout the year, seiu nurses feel we should be united, not divided --with other nurses, with other healthcare workers, with patient care advocates--to work for quality care. why then, is the california nurses association declaring war on nurses?

we're renewing our call for an end to cna's divisive actions as the outcome of a union representation election remains in balance for 1,000 of our nurse colleagues at three las vegas hospitals. despite months of cna's lies and false promises the cna failed to capture enough votes to lure nurses away from seiu.

cna's raiding in las vegas is yet another move aimed to divide nurses at a critical time when patients need us most. cna is also actively trying to decertify seiu nurses throughout california and other states. in march, the cna waged an aggressive "vote no" campaign in ohio, forcing the cancellation of union elections for 8,300 nurses and hospital workers in nine hospitals. in recent years the cna also has raided other unions or intervened in other unions' organizing drives in hawaii, illinois, missouri, tennessee, texas, and other states.

this nurses week, rather than dividing the too-few nurses who already have a union voice, let's unite the 85% who don't--for our patients and our profession.

for more information on cna's divisive actions, go to www.shameoncna.com.

posted on behalf of my nurse colleagues in seiu

[lucretiamott]

Dear all,

If you have read anything about the woman whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, she was a radical, a revolutionary, a bit of a trouble maker and above all an idealist who felt that it was her vocation in life to not only improve the lot of the sick, but open doors and windows to women who were not allowed to have a voice, let alone a position of authority and responsibility in English society. She fought many battles with doctors who viewed nurses as servants with no brains, government officials in the military and in public health who viewed dainty women like her like pests and lastly, her own family and a society who believed women should restrict their activities to the parlor when it came to political or religious thoughts. She wrote a small novel, "Cassandra" that would have scandalized British strait-laced society had it been published in her lifetime, intimating that Christ, upon returning for his second try, would come back as a women, fight for the poor and not be recognized as significant because he chose to return in the form of a woman whose significance in society has already been discussed. The best work so far about her, "The Making of A Radical Theologian" by British historian, Val Webb, is a tehttps://allnurses.com/forums/images/smilies/added/cry.gifstimony to her fighting spirit and her determination to change herself and better the lot of the common man in her day.

I am new to "allnurses" but I am not new to nursing. I have been an RN for 17 years and thing as an NP (13 years now) have gone from good, to bad to ugly when it comes to my practice in public health and health care in general. It is becomig more difficult to care for patients given our current system that asks for the cash, the credit card and insurance number first before we find out why our patients are sick. If you do manage to get through the door you will be billed, co-payed and deductibled to death. The system is currently on life-support supported by the largest, meanest and lastly, socio-pathic group of corporations, insurance companies and hospital chains, who like the oil companies gouge us to death, literally, to make money off our patient's pain and suffering and our naivete over our ethical duty to fight this system on behalf the woman who struggled to build for us.

I have read the comments about the need for "unity" for all nurses. But unity at the expense of what?? I have followed the arguments carefully, and as an SEIU nurse who has seen my local change from a small, fighting local into a large conglomerate who is currently, capitulating to the downtown interests, I yearn for a return to our days when we challenged vocally and militantly and won back our services with our patients at our side. Now, we sit and watch as 14 critical care PHN's are lost, our workman's comp clinic out-sourced, nursing home units closed and nurses re-assigned and credit card readers in my clinic and even in homeless clinics up and ready to go to charge my patients for the services I know many cannot afford. There has not be a mailer, a flyer

or a fax to organize or inform of planned rallies or efforts to fight this time. But there have been many flyers, mailers and pizza meeting to bash CNA/NNOC over the past few weeks. Mr. Stern's letter rings hollow, when there are many nurses like the 400 in Reno, who long for a change out of SEIU. The head of that local even intimated that the 400 who voted were ill-informed and plain stupid and didn't quite understand what they were signing even though the card clearly stated the obvious. SEIU-I is dumbing down the process itself. That is why there is a reform movement within SEIU-I, ltself to take back the locals and return member-driven priorities back to the local level.

In conclusion, the issues for the registered nurse in this debate, have gone beyond just what union will represent us in collective bargaining. It is fundamentally, about who will control our practice, our voice as advocates for our patients and who has the will, the spirit, the determination to fight a system that doesn't respect that practice nor our judgement. Unity is a comforting concept but unity at the expense of silencing the voice of the RN as a patient advocate or allowing that practice to be controlled by a system bent on placing us between good nursing judgement and our employers will to save or make money isn't ethical. As Florence would say, "All the results of good nursing, can be undone by one thing and one thing alone, petty management". She understood that concept even in the mid 1800's that management, in what ever form it took, would try and undermine that judgement when allowed too.

Therefore, I would invite, those who want unity above all to read the life and work, of the woman we celebrate tomorrow. She has been in the shadows of history far too long. She was a radical, a mystic, an innovator and a militant who fought long and hard to give us the profession we have today. In my opinion, she would relish the debate going on in nursing but in the end support those who would challenge the system itself, the thinkers and the visionaries who want to change our system before it radically, changes us.

I thank my colleagues at CNA/NNOC who speak for me and my patients.

[offlimits]

After all of the years that NYSNA has been taking dues, and done nothing, like NO MANDATORY OVERTIME, like SAFE STAFFING, and has jumped on the band wagon with the CNA/NNOC people are starting to realize that it's all about the dues, it's all about the money. Lorraine Seidel and Roseann De Moro are not nursing leaders. Roseann is not a nurse, and she was a teamsters. Lorraine has not worked as a nurse since 1982, and she was a director for 1199 RN division and was termed. She then worked for the screen actors guild for 11 yrs. NYSNA disaffiliated from the UAN without the members vote. The members voted against it. St Rose, Las Vegas, did not win a majority of the vote to join the CNA. So history repeats itself, be careful dont sign anything and do your homework.

[RN1989]

I talked with a friend who is in a union. She did not have a choice NOT to join the union when she went to work for her facility. She had to pay money up front before she even got her first paycheck to "join" the union. They tried to collect dues from her even when she was not working/earning a salary due to being on a leave of absence. She rectified that problem after talking to her rep. Although there are specific incidents that she has not liked about the union, she feels that it has helped the overall working conditions of her facility.

Anywhere there is money involved there is greed and the temptation to bend standards and look the other way. All are steppingstones to outright illegal and unethical actions. I do think that unions could help more nurses. But the greed and dirty politics of it is what turns nursing into a common job and makes us look like we are not professionals.

[lucretiamott]

CNA/NNOC executive director Rose-Ann DeMoro, although, you are correct isn't an RN, neither is Mr. Andy Stern or past, executive director of SEIU 790, Josie Moonie. If I had to chose who I would want to hire to lead a profession of RN's as an executive director, the later two choices, given their current and past tract records , their late in the day and than stellar performance on protecting staff nursing ratios against our Govenator in 05 and their silence on single-payer, medicare for all program, then Rose-Ann wins hands down for me on issues that should be at the for-front of the debate on health care reform in this nation.

Executive Director Rose-Ann DeMoro has a proven tract record of not being afraid to stand up for CNA/NNOC beliefs that safe-staffing and a single-payer health care system would go along way in improving patient care and access to that care by patients shut out of this system. She has stood her ground with a grace and dignity that even her detractors must acknowledge on behalf of nurses who will continue to fight for these issues.

If Florence Nightingale were alive today, she would have hired Rose Ann in a heart-beat to help her organize her own struggles to improve the care practices of nurses and fight for better care for patients.

lucretiamott

[Julia RN]

I don't believe in "unity at all costs", but enough so that we can work together on issues where we do have common ground.

Nurses have the right to be in the union of their choice or no union at all. If nurses are unhappy with their union, I encourage them to fight to take control and improve them. But if they have exhausted internal mechanisms to reform the union, feel deceived and harmed by it, they are justified in seeking an alternative.

The problem is with some of these campaigns- the misrepresentation, false promises, spin, trashing the whole union instead of the dealing with the problems the nurses want help with, concentrating just on economics- these campaigns don't build the labor movement or add to the collective power of nurses, IMO.

[lucretiamott]

Good comments all around. I am covered under collective bargaining by SEIU and it isn't the same union it was before. Just when I thought as a nurse I could go back and figure out what the latest budget cuts will mean for our clinic, I get a call from a company hired by SEIU-I, to ask me a series of questions highly biased in my opinion against CNA. It was not a scientific poll to find out my opinion but a highly inflammatory series of questions that viewed CNA in a totally, negative light.

This was a "slander poll" not a poll that would in any way shape or form give any true understanding of what unions, the fight on health care reform, nor a more balanced view of CNA by a union, that has lost all credibility in my view as a legitimate voice for RN's especially.

My dues money is being spent not to fight cuts to local health care but to tarnish and destroy a group of dedicated nurses who want single-payer, a decent contract and union democracy. No matter how many suspect polls, divisive mailers, carefully, scripted videos and lastly, lawsuits against our own members in UHW-W who are being targeted within SEIU itself, it is a shame that all of this money is not going to improve nursing care in our hospital and to fight the cuts that will end surely have the opposite effect. SEIU-I has lost all credibility on this issue with this latest poll that will surely be touted as an accurate view of SEIU members of CNA nurses. But it isn't. I guess the prevailing view at the top is the more mud they sling, the more it will stick. But, in my view it only sticks to SEIU-I. I think that this attempt to tarnish an image of CNA will only engender more sympathy or in the view of some, make joining a union less appealing. Unionization is difficult in our country at the present moment, made more so by unions that chose, like SEIU-I, to get bigger by making deals with corporate employers who in the end will sacrifice our nursing responsibility to our patients by asking us to ignore problems.

Nurses have a right and I would say a duty to their patients. CNA is both a union and a professional association of registered nurses. I think that is a strong argument in their favor. And in today's world of corporatized healthcare, where profit and money is often times comes first before patients, I would want an organization/union that has the credibility, stamina, fighting spirit and the patience to with-stand the avalanche of divisive innuendo and slander so often apart of our political landscape these days.

For me, CNA/NNOC is truly a voice for nurses and has a vision for healthcare that SEIU-lacks at the current moment.

lucretiamott

[mdfog10]

Mass. Ratio bill has passed in the house!!!!!!:yeah:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/23/hoax_by_truant_prompts_wide_search/

see the second news item

[offlimits]

Congrats to Mass. And in regards to some of the comments above,

both the SEIU and the NNOC/CNA have spent exorberants amounts of money on mud slinging. I find that embarrassing. I have been a member of the SEIU in the past, but not a member of the CNA. The hospital I worked in voted to decertify the SEIU. Both of these unions are in a turf battle, and it's all about dues. And all of the other unions are just sitting back and watching, waiting ........this is what organized labor has become in healthcare. I personally have no room in my career for these behaviors. The CNA has lost 2 campaigns in the past month, Vegas and Fresno. Nurses voted to stay with the SEIU while others voted overwhelmingly to remain union free. We do have a national union called the UAN, that some states have decided to disaffiliate from. I don't know, I think my choice to sit this one out comes from a long experienced background in unions and the future of our profession. But I want a choice, in all aspects of life.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

I certainly don't have all the facts but do believe this is the correct vote count in Vegas:

...In a three-way race, 400 RNs voted for CNA/NNOC, with 377 voting for SEIU Local 1107 and 26 opting for no union....

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/dramatic-las-vegas-vote-by-rns-for-change,385976.shtml

BUT this thread is about a SAFE STAFFING BILL!

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

Yesterday:

House approves nurse staffing bill

Friday, May 23, 2008

BOSTON - The state House of Representatives yesterday overwhelmingly approved a bill that could end a long debate over the need for regulating nurse staffing levels in hospitals.

The House voted 115-35 to approve a bill that directs the state Department of Public Health to establish a limit on the maximum number of patients that a hospital could assign to any one nurse.

http://www.masslive.com/chicopeeholyoke/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-2/121152875711440.xml&coll=1

Today:

Hospital chiefs worry about cost of staffing

...Leaders of two hospitals in Western Massachusetts yesterday criticized legislation that would authorize the state to set nurse-to-patient ratios in hospitals across the state, saying the proposal would be much too costly and wouldn't improve patient care....

...Steven F. Bradley, a vice president for Baystate Health in Springfield, said yesterday that approval of the bill would be a disaster. He said the bill would force the state's hospitals to significantly increase hiring of nurses at a time when there is a nursing shortage....

http://www.masslive.com/chicopeeholyoke/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1211615169285570.xml&coll=1

[focusedone]

I believe that unions dumb down professions.

I live in a state where we have a very small percentage of unions, in fact, I do not know any nurses in a union setting. We have very few problems with staffing, most of the hospitals in my large city are magnet hospitals, and unions are not even discussed in the nursing schools in the area.

I have seen what unions have done to the teaching profession, and I believe it has made the educational system in this country worse, not better. If unions are so wonderful, why did we go from number 1 in the world in education to number 25 in the last 30 years? Why are classrooms getting bigger and bigger and children are getting lost in the system? Because unions are just another form of bureaucracy.

We have decided that we are not intelligent or articulate enough to voice our own concerns, but rather others should speak for us. I feel sorry for those nurses living in California, it does not seem that they are seen as true professionals.

Nurses need to become MUCH more involved in politics, advance their education past the ADN and even BSN level to truly understand the art of nursing and act like the professionals we label ourselves to be. Every other profession that we deal with that is involved in patient care has a minimum of a Bachelor's degree. We can't run with the big boys when we don't educate ourselves on all the aspects of health care and when have someone else representing our views.

[RN1989]

Nurses need to become MUCH more involved in politics, advance their education past the ADN and even BSN level to truly understand the art of nursing and act like the professionals we label ourselves to be. Every other profession that we deal with that is involved in patient care has a minimum of a Bachelor's degree. We can't run with the big boys when we don't educate ourselves on all the aspects of health care and when have someone else representing our views.

When you figure out another way to get more than a handful of nurses to stand together and fight for what's right - let us know. Otherwise, we don't have many options because there are too few of us willing to go all the way against the system.