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Nurse Power: United or Divided? The Timing Could Not Be Worse

By Kathy Sackman and Bonnie Marpoe

Just when more than three decades of nurse unionism is ready to culminate in a united force powerful enough to get national safe staffing ratios enacted, the nurse union movement seems to be splitting and turning against itself.   

By working together, through the AFL-CIO, we got an excellent safe-staffing bill introduced into Congress. But now, with one nurse union (SEIU) threatening to quit the AFL-CIO, and another raiding AFL-CIO affiliates, the unity that is indispensable for progress on a large scale is slipping away.   

More than 300,000 nurses make up their union movement. The movement has been brought into being one workplace at a time, in hundreds of workplaces, by the courage of thousands of nurses. Our nurse unions have affiliated with a number of different national unions; UNA-AFSCME has counterparts — a true alphabet soup including UAN-ANA, FNHP-AFT, the SEIU Nurse Alliance and others.   

But regardless of our affiliation, our goals are the same. We bargain for better pay and fair treatment on the job. And we’ve all won contracts that make our jobs better than they were, and better than nursing in non-union facilities.

We realized, however, that there are goals we can’t attain one hospital at a time. Our primary goal, to improve and provide quality patient care in all patient care settings, is one example. Goals like this, affecting the whole health care industry, can be addressed, but only by working together. That’s why most union nurses have joined the national labor movement. And why our unions came together within the AFL-CIO in 2003.   

What is "raiding"? 

When a union tries to enlarge itself by recruiting the members of another union — that’s raiding. And that is exactly what the so-called National Nurse Organizing Committee, a project of the California Nurses Association, is doing. Raiding doesn’t enlarge the nurse union movement, it steals members from existing unions. At a time when nurse unions should be using their strength and resources to get changes that will improve their ability to provide quality care and to protect our insurance plans, our overtime rights, and even our rights to have a union, they are instead fighting battles with each other.   

UNA-AFSCME not only condemns raiding, but also stands for nurse unity. Our commitment to partnership with other nurse unions is undiminished. We’re supporting the national officers of AFSCME in their efforts to keep the AFL-CIO united and focused.   

And we will ask the Nurses Congress to take the lead on this agenda by issuing a call to the other nurse unions to get back on track, to unite on behalf of our safe staffing bill and every other goal of working nurses. As nurses, we are the patient advocates. It is imperative that as nurse unions, we stay united and focused on the delivery of the best patient care and the ability of all citizens to obtain quality health care.

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