National Nurses United

Meet NNU's National Officers Fearless Leaders The four RNs leading National Nurses United bring to the table decades of experience as nurses and patient advocates in the West, Midwest and East…and a good-sized dose of courage. Elected at NNU's founding convention in December, each national officer will serve a two-year term. Here's your chance to get to know them. Deborah Burger, RN CO-PRESIDENT D eborah Burger, RN doesn't like to talk about herself. The three-term president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee prefers to praise others who have helped turn CNA/NNOC into one of the most dynamic labor unions in the country and Burger into a respected nurse leader. She mentions the dedicated members, the experienced RNs who mentored her along the way— and yes, her husband, for holding down the fort at home while Burger was taking on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the nation's healthcare corporations in her quest for safe patient care. "The heroes in my life are the ones who are out there working to make life better for people, instead of lining their pockets like a lot of politicians are," Burger says. Burger's own commitment to nurse activism began with a tragedy. Leaving work after pulling a double shift one day in 1984, Burger called her first husband to let him know that she was on her way home. At the time he sounded fine, Burger recalls, but when she arrived at their house, she found him unconscious on the living room floor, the victim of a heart attack that would take his life. "It was one of those experiences that change your world view in terms of what your priorities are and how fast things can happen," she says now. "You realize that you have to make the best of life, and you stop taking things for granted." When Burger's employer refused to grant her leave time to settle her husband's estate, she decided to fight. After winning the time off with the help of her labor representative, she was asked by CNA/NNOC leaders to take a seat on the organization's collective bargaining commission—a role that led to other positions as treasurer, vice-president and finally, president and co-president. "Deborah is very committed to what she believes in and to the cause of nursing," said Geri Jenkins, RN, CNA/NNOC co-president and vice president of National Nurses United. "She always puts the interests of nurses first in everything she does, and she has a great institutional memory of who we are, where we've come from, and where we're going." Burger saw the need for mandatory RN-to-patient staffing ratios early on and became a leader in that campaign, even though she was working in a clinic at Kaiser Permanente, not an inpatient setting, and wouldn't be directly impacted. "I understood that in the long run ratios would affect all of us, both as nurses and as patients," she says. 18 N AT I O N A L N U R S E Deborah Burger, RN She credits the democratic leadership structures in CNA/NNOC and NNU (all leaders are working nurses involved in their profession and union activities) with keeping her energized and engaged over the years. "Just because you have a title doesn't mean you are aloof and away from the action," she says. "You're not just hanging out waiting for things to happen, you're making things happen." Making time for simple pleasures like roasting her own coffee beans and making her own jam helps, too. Burger's colleagues on the CNA/NNOC board say she helps keep them on track and focused during a busy time for the national nurses' movement, with the formation of National Nurses United, contract negotiations on the horizon, and a relief effort in Haiti to coordinate. During the founding of NNU, Jenkins says, Burger "played a pivotal role because of the relationships she developed over the years with people, the understanding she had of everyone's issues and what we were going to do to fix the problems in our profession." Burger says she was impressed, as she and her nurse colleagues from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Massachusetts Nurses Association and United American Nurses gathered last spring to plan NNU's founding convention, at how smoothly everyone worked together. "It's kind of like when you have a friend that you haven't seen in 10 years, you think that when you see them again they will have W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2010

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