National Nurses United

Retirees 1/9/07 3:03 PM Page 10 "Organizing feeds my soul," said Stewart. "And we don't want to lose the input, expertise, and knowledge of nurses who have been active. There's going to be a wave of people retiring pretty soon. It would be good for CNA to see what excites these individual nurses, what they're good at, what they enjoy, and ask them to participate." CNA/NNOC is doing just that. Recently, the organization created a retiree division to provide a formal structure for keeping retired RN members involved. Kay McVay, RN and CNA/NNOC president emeritus, helped coordinate and launch the program. It is now recruiting recently-retired nurses, mailing outreach material, and building a database of RNs. Still active since her retirement in 1995, McVay noticed that the organization typically lost touch with nurses as soon as they retired, no longer paid dues, and stopped receiving regular communications from their union. And with RN workforce analysts estimating that the number of nurse leaders retiring will rise in four years time, and that 75 percent of current nurse leaders will have retired by the year 2020, the organ- ization stands to lose its most important human resources if it doesn't keep retirees in the loop. Not only could CNA/NNOC use the volunteer help with its organizing and educating programs, but retired nurses, with their extensive institutional memory of the organization and the nursing profession, get an opportunity to help the next generation of nurses. They are best positioned to defend nursing at a time when threats such as the federal "Kentucky River" decision (a ruling that potentially classifies all nurses as supervisors ineligible for unionization) and the advent of technological fixes jeopardize the practice of RNs. Even more forward-looking RNs realize that they could soon be the patient in that bed, and have a personal interest in ensuring that nurses remain strong patient advocates. "The retiree division is something that I think has been missing," said McVay. "We really do need a way of contacting those who have been with us before. We just need to figure out how to capture these people. They have a lot of expertise and we need to be able to keep Kay McVay, RN and CNA/NNOC president emeritus, says that it's a shame if retired nurses don't stay connected to the profession. Here, McVay protests at a rally for ratios in Sacramento. 10 REGISTERED NURSE W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G DECEMBER 2006

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