National Nurses United

of Kaiser and other hospital executives as well as our nurses. "If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday," wrote Pearl Buck, or, in the words of Oscar Wilde, "Memory is the diary we all carry about with us." Kaiser RNs have long been in the fore- front of standing up for their patients and themselves, setting a benchmark that others have followed. To understand the victory of Kaiser nurses today, a good place to start is the 14-month fight with a more entrenched Kaiser manage- ment of the 1990s that sought to push through multiple contract reduction demands and refused to respond to RN concerns about patient care standards. The Kaiser RNs well understood that their response would rebound through other hospitals. As Kaiser RN Zenei Cortez, now a CNA-co-president, noted later, "We needed to fight not only for all the Kaiser nurses, but for all the RNs in the United States." And fight they did, with six short-term, unified, strikes, with a vision that the nurses and their organization would not allow the role of the registered nurse to be compromised. Throughout the battle, nurses had to withstand a unified healthcare industry, their union partners who signed the infamous labor-management partnership on the day of the first strike, and an often-hostile press. But we had a significant ally, as Kaiser RN, now CNA and NNU co-president Debo- rah Burger noted afterward. "The strikes galvanized not only the nurses, but the public and the patients. Each time we came back, there was even more support." Through that long fight, Kaiser and the hospital industry as a whole learned a valuable lesson. The Kaiser RNs, and the leadership and staff of the organization, would not break. It ended with a stellar attainment, as the New York Times noted in a national article headlined, "Nurses Get New Role in Patient Protection. Pact with Biggest H.M.O. Allows Care Givers to Guard Standards." A key component was the establishment of an unprecedented provision in which Kaiser agreed to the establishment of 18 quality liaisons, selected by the nurses them- selves, to meet with management to address and resolve patient care concerns, as well as protection of the RNs' contract standards achieved over years of effort. As Robert Kuttner wrote in the Boston Globe at the time, "Unions do best, not just as self-interested workers with their hands out but as a broader social conscience on behalf of vulnerable people. Indeed, if labor fails to play this role, it is just another inter- est group, and it loses public support." That is the legacy that is a foundation of our latest achievement with Kaiser and our contin- ued success in fighting for all nurses, patients, and the public interest. It is a legacy, and model, our organization will never forget. RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 5 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 13

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