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S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 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 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 11 T here are consistent themes that I am hearing each day from nurses. The more experienced or sea - soned nurses, whom our friend Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, terms "spicy" (finely seasoned!), believe that some of the less-experienced nurses coming up do not have the history or awareness to appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears that went into building the organization and standards we have today. Standards that are common today in our contracts: controls on unsafe working con di- tions, family health coverage, pensions, vaca- tions, paid sick leave, the ability to take weekends off and have some say in your work schedule, and improvements in pay. Standards that our spicy nurses won through collective action, by building strong nurses' unions, courageously standing up to their employers and a very powerful, commercially motivated healthcare indus- try, and fighting when necessary. But what I hear from a number of younger nurses is that many of the older nurses don't want to fight. Then there is the technology… the "spicy nurses" know fundamentally that employers have tried every trick in the book to displace skills and analytical think- ing with other classifications. Technology is the latest scheme to displace human intervention and advocacy. In short, machines won't stand up to administrators who want to short circuit patient care. Machines don't advocate, RNs advocate. More recent nurses to the profession who were raised with a quantum increase in the use of technology initially attempt to embrace it. But quickly they discover the fallacy in the inappropriate use of technology, which is time consuming and takes them away from the bedside. Ultimately, through their assessment skills, they learn that nursing the machine is not the same thing as nursing the patient. In healthcare as well as all other sectors of the economy, the employers have a strate- gy. And that strategy doesn't change. Its objective is singular—more profit. But time changes and the tactics they employ for their strategies shift. In my many years in nurses' organizations, the schemes employed for the displacement of nurses initially centered on the use of unlicensed assistive personnel (UAPs), who one CEO claimed "could be a monkey off of the street" as long as there was a nursing manager to supervise them. We fought that. We won. When we won, the employers, aided and abetted by the nurse management organiza- tion the American Nurses Association (ANA), shifted to a goal that would decimate the number of direct-care RNs by trying to restrict employment to baccalaureate nurses or master's-prepared nurses. They implicitly assume that a nurse with a greater credential would be less inclined to want to touch a patient—and they could thus reduce the collective voice and power of direct-care RNs. The ANA collaborated with nefarious forces in the industry to convince the decision makers that if they had the workforce of just BAs or MAs then they could reintroduce their unli- censed personnel. That strategy remains in place today but with little agreement from those nurses who actually want to provide direct care, many of them, by the way, nurses with BAs. So now the grand strategy that is coming is an age old one: Divide and Conquer what the cynical employers are hoping is that nurses will sell out nurses if the price is good enough. The employers will acknowledge that long-term nurses have indeed fought to improve nurses' contracts and standards. The employers will also try to convince the more experienced nurses that the less- seasoned nurses do not really care about the issues, that they are "in it for the money." So here comes the hook— Two Tiers the employer will come to the table with a great offer for the long-term nurse: raises, maintaining benefits and hard-won standards like no call off, no rotation, or weekends off. But they will say, beginning now, the less- experienced nurses, especially new grads, must take a wage freeze or a substantial cut in starting pay, they will not be in the retirement plan, they will have greater copays on insur- ance, and they will have diminished standards. The long-term nurses will have a choice. Will they feel justified in keeping what they have accomplished because they fought for it, it is theirs, and the less-experienced nurses don't appreciate what they have won, or ... Will they stand up for the future of nurs- es and nursing? Gratifyingly, thus far, when we have seen these two-tier proposals, the long-term nurs- es have fought back. And they have remained unified with all nurses in the facility. But the lure is going to become greater and more widespread. Employers are looking for that one group of nurses they can peel off to set a lower standard for the newer nurses. This must be stopped at each turn. If unity is destroyed, then there can also be consequences for long-term nurses in future bargaining. Boomerang if two-tier systems are allowed to occur and unity is broken in the new bargaining round, the employer will be asking the less-experienced nurse, "Why should the other nurses have so much more than you do? Do you really want to help them?" I Want to Hear from You there is a lot more that could be said, but I want to hear from you, your thoughts, your experiences. Send email to execoffice@nationalnursesunited.org. My Bottom Line: Keep the flame alive spicy nurses of the world are the current keepers of the lamp and the lamp gets passed on through the generations. We are at a critical time in history. Do not let greedy employers blow out the flame. RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. RoseAnn DeMoro Executive Director, National Nurses United Unity is Key Solidarity among nurses is critical to the profession RAD_June 2011 10/11/11 9:25 PM Page 11