National Nurses United

RAD:May 2/28/09 1:04 AM Page 11 Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director, CNA/NNOC If We Build It, RNs Will Come The national RN movement takes huge leap forward as we team up with other major nursing groups to form country's biggest registered nurse union in history th e yearn ing of RNs throughout the country for a united, national nurses movement has taken a giant leap forward with the exciting news this month that we are forming the largest RN union in U.S. history. Our new union, the United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee (UAN-NNOC) will combine the experiences, resources, influence, and spirit of the best nurses have to offer into a powerful organization of 150,000 direct-care RNs from coast to coast. It affords us a rare, collective opportunity to break through the fragmentation and divisions that have tethered the efforts of staff nurses in particular to build a unified, powerful national voice, to begin to bring all directcare RNs into one house, and to more effectively marshal all RNs into the campaigns to fix our broken healthcare system, protect and improve patient care standards, and defend the RN profession. For CNA/NNOC members, it means we remain who we are, with the leadership you have chosen, and the representation and record of accomplishment that have set a model for nurses and patients everywhere. And more. It means more national allies and a stronger national voice to protect our contracts, advance our agenda, and promote and extend the patient advocacy role that has long defined the character and mission of CNA/NNOC. California's landmark RN ratios, secured and maintained by CNA/NNOC members, is Exhibit A for why a national RN movement is so important. Since the days we shocked the hospital industry by first enacting the ratio law, then routing the efforts by Gov. Schwarzenegger and the hospitals to roll back the law, hospital executives continue to aspire to terminate the law. The latest example are two new JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2009 pseudo-academic studies intended to undermine legislative and public support for the law, now in effect five years, that coincide with the window in 2009 for legislative review of the law. But the ace in the hole for the hospital industry has long been the fact that California remains the only state with hospital-wide ratios, despite their popularity with nurses, patients, and the public at large. That poses a permanent threat for the California law, especially with so many of our California employers operating in other states with lower standards, as well as depriving nurses and patients in the other 49 states of the clear benefits of the ratios. Through NNOC, we have sponsored ratio bills in a number of other states, but have yet to overcome the colossal economic and political clout of the hospital industry and its allies. Now by uniting with 75,000 other direct-care RNs who share our common commitment to RN ratios as the most effective vehicle to assure safe hospital staffing, we will have far greater muscle for enacting ratios in state capitals and Congress. Ratios are just one example. Add in the dramatic gains CNA/NNOC has won for RNs in pensions, retiree health benefits, salaries, enhanced pay for longevity and foreign service, restrictions on floating and other unsafe practices, legislative safeguards for whistleblowers and RN professional practice. All of those and more are especially vulnerable in a climate of general economic collapse, with healthcare industry employers, like other businesses, implementing layoffs, and demanding cutbacks in economic and workplace standards. In that realm, the small percentage of RNs with collective representation, and the splintering of RNs among multiple unions, including many in which their RN members are a small fraction and an afterthought in political and bargaining priority, is potentially disastrous. W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G Consider the professional parallels. Teachers, firefighters, and police officers are overwhelmingly unionized and have long been unified in a small handful of unions exclusive to their profession. The result is a long track record of legislative, regulatory, and collective bargaining power on issues of paramount importance to their members. CNA/NNOC's board of directors has long set a clear goal of breaking through this impediment, and bringing all RNs together into one strong national movement and organization. It was the spark that created the NNOC, and led to a CNA/NNOC membership that now touches all 50 states and includes collective bargaining representation today in Illinois, Nevada, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Texas as well as California. And it is the dream that has inspired us to find partners to construct a new order for RNs that reaches its next big stage of fruition with UAN-NNOC, with our sister and brother members in the United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association. What powers the new formation is a common commitment to an all-RN national union, bringing the benefits of unionization to all non-union RNs through a direct-care RN led organization, and cementing a potent organized force to promote RN rights, RN practice, RN ratios, and improved RN standards. What also unites us is a shared vision for real healthcare reform, an aversion to the brutality of an insurance-based system that callously discards the health and safety of patients and working people, and our common goal of placing nurses in the forefront of the campaign for healthcare justice and a single-payer, Medicare-for-all, style reform. The hill remains steep for our challenges, but we are making dramatic progress forward. I Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of CNA/NNOC. REGISTERED NURSE 11

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