FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 2000

Massachusetts Nurses Association Makes Bold Change In Leadership and
Direction:
Board Appoints New Executive Director and President As Organization Adopts
Progressive Agenda to Address Crisis in Health Care

CANTON, Mass. -- The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) Board of
Directors today announced a change in its leadership to reflect the
organization's commitment to pursue a more progressive and proactive agenda
to address what the organization believes is a growing crisis in health care
caused by corporatization and managed care. The Board also voted to continue
its efforts to pursue independence from its national organization, the
American Nurses Association, which the MNA sees as too moderate in its
positions to adequately address the needs of staff nurses on the frontlines
of health care.

The Board has appointed Julie Pinkham, RN, as the new executive director of
the 20,000 member Association to replace Mary Manning. Pinkham, who has been
a staff member at MNA since 1989, has spent the last five years as the
Director of the Association's Labor Relations Department. During her tenure,
Pinkham has revitalized and grown the MNA's unionized membership, leading a
series of successful organizing drives, and drawing national recognition for
the MNA's strong positions and activism around issues of safe staffing,
mandatory overtime and occupational health and safety. Under her leadership,
the MNA has become one of the leading and most progressive voices for staff
nurses and patients in the era of managed care and health care
corporatization.

The Board also appointed Denise Garlick to be the President of the
organization. Garlick, a staff nurse and long-time member of the
organization's Cabinet for Labor Relations, was in line under MNA bylaws for
the MNA Presidency following the resignation today of President Karen Daley
and four other Board members. In addition to Garlick, the Board appointed
Nora Watts and Liz Joubert to fill those vacant positions, and are working on
finalizing the two additional appointments.

"I am humbled and honored to assume leadership of this organization," said
Garlick. "The changes that were made today in our organization demonstrate a
new and revolutionary change in MNA that has been building for a long time.
Our membership, predominantly staff nurses toiling at the bedside under
horrendous conditions, have demonstrated to us that they want the MNA to take
bold steps and take strong stands to protect their patients and themselves.
This is truly a day of celebration for every staff nurse in Massachusetts,
and ultimately for our patients."

The leadership changes at the MNA come on the heels of closely watched vote
at its annual business meeting in November, where the vast majority of the
organization's membership voted to support disaffiliation, but narrowly
missed the two thirds margin required to pass a bylaw change allowing
disaffiliation from the ANA. The Board has voted to schedule another meeting
within six months for another vote on the disaffiliation issue.

"Our membership has spoken and we have heard them," Garlick concluded. "They
want an MNA that speaks loud and clear on issues impacting staff nurses and
those who support staff nurses. This organization is now poised to raise that
voice clearly and unequivocally."

# # #

David Schildmeier
Director of Public Communications
Massachusetts Nurses Association
800-882-2056 x717 (Within Mass. only)
781-830-5717
781-821-4445
781-249-0430 (cell phone)
508-426-1655 (pager)

------------------------------------------------

Nurses' group splits at raucous meeting

by Anne Barnard, Boston Globe

December 2, 2000

Months of infighting at the state's largest nurses' organization ended with a
bang yesterday as the group's more radical wing fired two key staffers and
ousted five board members, creating a new board unanimously bent on seceding
from the more moderate American Nurses Association.

The vanquished called it ''a coup d'etat'' and ''a hostile takeover.'' The
victors called it a declaration of independence by rank-and-file nurses
''taking back control of our association'' from managers and academics.

Either way, when the dust settled, the Massachusetts Nurses Association had a
brand new look. And a split from the Washington, D.C.-based parent group
looked a lot more likely. Such a move could change the nursing landscape
nationwide at a time of crisis in health care, because the Massachusetts
group is seen as a leader on issues such as patients' rights and nurses'
working conditions.

A majority of nurses attending the state group's Nov. 9 business meeting
supported the split in a voice vote, but they narrowly failed to muster the
required two-thirds majority to pass the measure. Their opponents called
yesterday's move a ''strongarm tactic'' to seize what they couldn't win in a
vote.

The pro-split faction argued that the Nov. 9 meeting was stacked with
managers who could get off work more easily, resulting in a vote that - in
what they half-jokingly called an echo of George W. Bush's apparent victory -
did not represent the true will of the membership.

''It was clear to us that the membership wanted a change. We decided that it
was our responsibility to make that change happen,'' said board member Peggy
O'Malley.

A new vote will be held in six months, probably on a weekend.

The stakes of the upheaval are large. The Massachusetts Nurses Association
makes up a tenth of the national group's membership and pays it $1 million in
dues each year, but some members had come to see the American Nurses
Association as a foot-dragger.

Board member Barbara Norton said yesterday's actions ''liberated'' the group
to work more effectively for goals such as federal and state bans on
mandatory overtime for nurses. But Karen Daley, who as president of the MNA
opposed the split, said they had harmed the cause.

''A political agenda has been put ahead of the desires of the members and
ahead of the well-being of nurses,'' she said, adding that after Nov. 9, ''we
all anticipated difficult months ahead, but we were hopeful we could come
together around the issues that are a common agenda for all of us.''

The fireworks at yesterday's board of directors meeting took Daley by
surprise.

The first vote, 9-4, was to reaffirm a commitment ''to do whatever we need to
do'' to make the split happen.

Next, the board voted 8-5 to fire executive director Mary Manning, who had
spoken out against the split. In her place, the board tapped Julie Pinkham,
the director of the Massachusetts group's union and a vocal critic of the
national group. Pinkham immediately fired Manning's secretary, Emily Eubanks,
and another staff member, Pat Brigham.

In protest, five board members walked out, including Daley and vice president
Jeanne Watson Driscoll. Daley said she and others expressed plans to resign
but did not formally do so. However, her opponents said they had resigned,
and the remaining members went on to vote in four replacements - including
three who ran for the board in recent elections but lost to the members who
left in protest. Denise Garlick was named president, and O'Malley vice
president.

The MNA is both a union and a professional organization, with most of its
membership coming from union locals. The national group, by contrast, only
recently created a union, which some Massachusetts nurses felt was not
properly insulated from management control. Daley said that problem could
have been addressed through cooperation; her opponents doubted that.

This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 12/2/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

----------------------------------------------

Massachusetts nurses continue struggle over ANA disaffiliation
Group selects new president, executive director

by Louis Pilla, Managing Editor, Nurses.com (lpilla@nurses.com)

December 4, 2000

Although the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) voted a little less than
a month ago to remain part of the American Nurses Association (ANA), the
issue over disaffiliation from the national group remains very much on the
table for Bay State nurses.

On Friday, the MNA issued a release saying that its board of directors voted
to continue its efforts to pursue independence from the ANA, "which the MNA
sees as too moderate in its positions to adequately address the needs of
staff nurses on the frontlines of health care."

This comes in conjunction with significant changes in the MNA's leadership.
Those changes include the resignation of President Karen Daley and four
members of the board of directors, as well as the ousting of the current
executive director.

The development marks "one of the most courageous, momentous occasions in
Massachusetts Nurses Association's history," Julie Pinkham, the MNA's new
executive director, told Nurses.com in an interview.

The MNA said that the leadership changes reflect the MNA's commitment to
address "a growing crisis in healthcare caused by corporatization and managed
care."

The issue of disaffiliation, Pinkham said, is "one step or one issue on a
much broader path. Rank and file nurses are seeking a progressive agenda to
basically deal with the issues of the healthcare crisis that's in front of
them right now. This is a move to put the organization in a position to best
address those issues."

Board takes action

During its first board meeting since the vote to remain affiliated with the
ANA in November, on Friday the board of directors passed by 9 to 4 a motion
reaffirming a commitment to disaffiliate from the ANA, according to David
Schildmeier, a spokesperson for the MNA. In September, the board had voted 7
to 5 for disaffiliation.

After that vote, Schildmeier said, the board went into executive session,
where it voted to replace Mary Manning, the current executive director, with
Pinkham, director of the association's labor relations department. Manning
had served in that capacity since roughly 1994.

During her tenure, the MNA said, Pinkham has grown the MNA's unionized
membership and drawn recognition for MNA's positions and activism on safe
staffing, mandatory overtime and occupational health and safety.

Replacing Manning, said Schildmeier, was "part of a change in the direction
of the organization," toward a more proactive stance, as opposed to an action
directed against Manning. The change was effective on Friday.

At that point, according to Schildmeier, those who disagreed with reaffirming
the commitment to disaffiliation verbally resigned and left the meeting. This
included President Karen Daley, who was in the middle of her second, two-year
term, as well as Jean Watson Driscoll, the newly elected vice president, and
Margaret Barry, newly elected treasurer.

The board then moved to fill those vacancies. Denise Garlick, a member of the
organization's cabinet for labor relations, who ran against Driscoll for vice
president, took on the role of president under the MNA bylaws, said
Schildmeier. She will remain so until the next election in fall 2001.

Finally, the board voted unanimously to hold a special meeting within 6
months to again take up the issue of disaffiliation from the ANA. As before,
a two-thirds majority is required to make the bylaw change that would lead to
disaffiliation.

"Absolute joy"

Friday's actions "eradicated" any sense of division at the Massachusetts
Nurses Association, Garlick told Nurses.com. "The atmosphere in the room was
one of absolute joy as the staff nurses claimed for their own their
organization that they've been financing for years. I think we're going to be
able to effectively move to a meeting where we can have the vote on
disaffiliation in accordance with our bylaws with nurses who are fully
informed of the issue and have access to a system that's fair in which they
can vote."

"By mid afternoon, we were looking at a board of directors that if we took
the vote, might well have been a unanimous vote to disaffiliate from the
ANA," she said.

Garlick noted that the November vote to disaffiliate from the ANA failed by a
small margin. "I think the date, the timing, the location, all of those
logistics were a system that was stacked against the nurses having an ability
to really feel effective at that meeting. It was a system set up against
staff nurses in my opinion."

On a national scale, Pinkham noted that 93 percent of staff nurses don't
belong to the ANA, a number "that isn't lost on people."What's more, she
noted, those state nurses associations with the largest membership are
"making every attempt to address a very progressive agenda that is basically
taking on the healthcare industry."

Those states, she noted, "are taking on an aggressive agenda of facing the
workplace issues that nurses have in which they cannot promote their ability
to practice their profession effectively, obviously because the industry is
making such changes, they're making it nearly impossible for nurses to do
what it is they need to do.

"The states that are willing to do that battle with them, you're going see
the membership grow. They states that are taking a moderate approach, you're
not going to see growth."

Comment from the ANA was not immediately available.

Copyright ©1996-2000

----------------------------------------------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 4, 2000

CONTACT:
Joan Meehan-Hurwitz, 202-651-7020
Hope Hall, 202-651-7027
rn=realnews@ana.org
www.nursingworld.org/rnrealnews

ANA Condemns Actions By Renegade Group In Massachusetts

Washington, DC -- Leaders of the American Nurses Association (ANA) have
expressed outrage over Friday's actions by the Massachusetts Nurses
Association (MNA) Board of Directors in firing staff members and claiming to
appoint new, like-minded board members in the place of duly elected members
who opposed their view of splitting from the national organization. ANA
leaders condemned such strong-arm tactics, saying some MNA board members are
unwilling to live by the outcome of their own democratic, membership process
conducted less than a month ago.

Members of the Labor Relations Cabinet had proposed a bylaws change that
called for the state organization to disaffiliate from ANA. The bylaws change
required a two-thirds vote and each member of MNA was eligible to vote at the
general business meeting held on Nov. 9. Those pushing to disaffiliate were
unsuccessful in getting the votes needed and, in fact, lost the vote twice,
having called a vote to reconsider after the first vote went against them.

"The general membership's will has been overturned by a small group who is
unwilling to live with the outcome of its own democratic process," said ANA
President Mary E. Foley, MSN, RN. "Their tactics are right from the play book
of union-busters - trample the rights of those who disagree with your view of
the world. I think most MNA members will find this takeover outrageous and
not in the best interests of nurses."

During the first meeting of a new board of directors on Dec. 1, the MNA board
fired the executive director and other staff members for no apparent reason
and subsequently claimed to appoint a new president, officers and board
members to fill spots already filled by individuals who were recently and
duly elected by the membership.

"Although this group says they are acting on behalf of the membership, they
have produced no evidence to support that claim," said Foley. "In fact, we
have polling data that shows that a majority of the membership favors
remaining affiliated with ANA. Such tactics are the actions of a desperate
group, who want to win at all costs, with little regard to the will of any of
the members including the collective bargaining members they claim to
represent."

ANA plans to challenge the MNA's latest actions and will continue to work
with a group of MNA members who are part of the Committee to Preserve ANA
Affiliation.

# # #

------------------------------------

ANA responds to Massachusetts nurses

Nurses.com

December 5, 2000

In a strongly worded press release, the American Nurses Association (ANA)
Monday condemned last week's actions at the Massachusetts Nurses Association
(MNA). Leaders of the ANA, the release said, expressed outrage at the MNA
board of directors' "firing staff members and claiming to appoint new,
like-minded board members in the place of duly elected members who opposed
their view of splitting from the national organization." The ANA claimed that
"some MNA board members are unwilling to live by the outcome of their own
democratic, membership process conducted less than a month ago."

"The general membership's will has been overturned by a small group who is
unwilling to live with the outcome of its own democratic process," said ANA
President Mary Foley in the release. "Their tactics are right from the play
book of union-busters -- trample the rights of those who disagree with your
view of the world. I think most MNA members will find this takeover
outrageous and not in the best interests of nurses," she is quoted as saying.
"Such tactics are the actions of a desperate group, who want to win at all
costs, with little regard to the will of any of the members including the
collective bargaining members they claim to represent."

The ANA also said that it has polling data that shows that a majority of the
membership favors remaining affiliated with ANA. This specific polling data
wasn't immediately available.

The release indicated that the ANA plans to challenge the MNA's latest
actions, but ANA spokesperson Hope Hall said that the ANA is still
determining what exactly occurred and that nothing is "set in stone about
what ANA's next step will be."

Copyright ©1996-2000

-------------------------------------------

Here's a press release describing the MNA's position on important new
legislation to address the nursing shortage, which was introduced today by
Senator Richard Moore. Tomorrow, the MNA will file its Nursing Sufficiency
Bill, vitally important legislation that would mandate a process for
establishing safe nurse staffing levels in all health care settings, which we
believe is the most important step towards making nursing practice
environments safe for nurses and for patients. While we need to increase our
numbers in nursing for sure, we must also make sure that the environments
nurses practice in are safe, rewarding, and conducive to the highest
standards of nursing practice. You can expect to hear more about the MNA's
legislative package in the future. Our entire package can be found on the
MNA web site at www.massnurses.org <http://www.massnurses.org> .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 5, 2000

Contact: David Schildmeier 781-249-0430 or 508-426-1655 (Pager)

Massachusetts Nurses Association Applauds Senator Richard Moore For
Introduction of Legislative Initiatives to Address Nursing Shortage

BOSTON, Mass. The Massachusetts Nurses Association is among those supporting
a series of legislative initiatives to address the growing nursing shortage,
which were introduced today at a press briefing held by State Senator Richard
T. Moore (D-Uxbridge). Moore, senate chair of the Joint Committee on Health
Care, has filed a series of bills to address the shortage of health care
workers and to reduce medical errors.

In Massachusetts as well as throughout the nation, a growing shortage of
nurses has led to a crisis in health care, which is eroding the quality of
care in our health care institutions. According to the MNA, an aging nursing
workforce, combined with health care management practices that have led to a
deterioration in the working conditions for nurses, has caused many nurse to
leave the profession, and slowed the number of students entering the
profession.

Senator Moore's legislation is designed to help alleviate this crisis.
Included in his package is the Clara Barton Nursing Excellence Program, which
would provide nursing scholarships for students entering the profession,
establish student loan repayment programs, and a signing bonus for those who
have demonstrated an excellence in nursing. It would provide grants to
healthcare institutions and institutions of higher education for the
establishment and maintenance of a mentoring and internship program for new
nurses.

"The MNA is proud to stand with Senator Moore today and we congratulate him
for taking a pro-active, pro-nurse, pro-patient approach to the issue of the
nurse shortage, which is nothing less than a public health crisis," said
Denise Garlick, President of the MNA who attended the press briefing today.
"Over the past year, the MNA has been focusing on the current nurse shortage,
with an eye on developing concrete strategies to address the shortage. We
are delighted to work with Senator Moore on this legislation as it represents
an important step towards addressing this crisis."

The MNA points to this legislation as an important first step in a series of
steps that need to be taken to address the shortage of nurses and to improve
patient care in the Commonwealth.

"Senator Moore has shown great foresight in putting together a package of
legislative initiatives that address both the shortage of nurses, as well as
issues of patient safety and the prevention of medication errors," Garlick
said. "We look forward to working with the legislature and Senator Moore on
this legislation as well as other important initiatives needed to ensure
every patient in the Commonwealth is provided the nursing care they deserve."

Paramount among these initiatives, according to the MNA, is the need for
legislation that guarantees safe staffing levels in all health care
facilities. The lack of safe staffing in the state's health care facilities
is what is leading to the rise of mandatory overtime, injuries to nurses,
increases in medication errors and other negative patient outcomes. This
week, the MNA will re-introduce legislation that would mandate safe staffing
levels in all health care settings. A similar measure passed in the
California legislature in 1999.

"While we need to encourage nurses to enter this great profession, nothing
substantive can be done to address the shortage unless and until we create a
practice environment for nurses that is safe for them and their patients,"
said Garlick. "The Senator has proposed legislation to address the issue of
poor staffing in nursing homes. Tomorrow, the MNA will file legislation to
provide similar protections for all nurses in all health care settings and we
look forward to working with the Senator and the legislature to expand the
scope of protections being proposed so that no patient in the state receives
care in an understaffed facility."

# # #

David Schildmeier
Director of Public Communications
Massachusetts Nurses Association
800-882-2056 x717 (Within Mass. only)
781-830-5717
781-821-4445
781-249-0430 (cell phone)
508-426-1655 (pager)

---------------------------------------------

State nurses split on unions

by Mary Carey, Daily Hampshire Gazette

December 6, 2000

Mary Powers, Patricia Healey and Carol Charest were at the Massachusetts
Nurses Association convention Nov. 9 when proponents of disengaging from the
national organization failed to muster the necessary two-thirds majority
vote.

Of the three area nurses, only Charest was wearing a button with a dinosaur
on it, signifying her strong desire to remain with the American Nurses
Association. It's a view the majority of MNA members view as backwards, she
acknowledges, thus the button.

Last week, in what was either a coup d'etat or a voluntary change of
personnel, depending on one's perspective, opponents of breaking from the
national organization were swept off the MNA's board of directors.

"It was all legal and above aboard. No one yelled. It was very quiet," said
Healey, who lives in Northampton and is District 1 director of the MNA and a
board member. "Now it is solid staff nurses."

The growing difference in agendas between staff nurses and registered nurses
who work in other areas - as academics, consultants or in hospital
management, for instance - is at the heart of a shakeup of the 21,000-member
MNA. A reflection of the rapidly changing health care landscape, it's also
the reason the MNA, which forms 10 percent of the national organization and
contributes $1.2 million to it annually in dues, seems likely to strike out
on its own in the coming months.

As Healey , Powers and Charest explain, the staff nurses, many of whom belong
to nurses' unions, are more focused on changing patient care and working
conditions, such as mandatory overtime, than are their non-staff
counterparts. In the view of many staff nurses, the national organization has
been slow to respond to their concerns, in part, because it also responds to
concerns of management, the very individuals who rely on rules like mandatory
overtime for nurses to staff hospitals in an age of nursing shortages.

Healey, a critical care nurse in cardiology at the Brigham and Woman's
Hospital in Boston, and Powers, of Westhampton, who works in the childbirth
unit at The Cooley Dickinson Hospital, are staff nurses.

"As the health care landscape has changed, staff nurses roles have been
changed and disempowered and we've seen this over the past 20 years," Healey
said. "We as staff nurses have tried to organize around those issues at the
bedside, and we have found the ANA to be very slow and conservative."

"There's admirals and generals in the army, and then the guys who land on the
beach," Powers said. "The staff nurses are the guys who land on the beach.
We're the warriors if you will."

The pro-ANA position

Charest, of Wilbraham, was a public health nurse in Amherst in the early
1960s. She's held a variety of posts, including professor at the Elms College
in Chicopee, and is a consultant. She has been working with the leadership of
the MNA for the past several years, holding town meetings on health care
issues and studying the effects of the corporatization of health care and the
Balanced Budget Act, which affected large cuts in Medicare reimbursements to
hospitals and nursing homes.

Charest said she was so upset by the impending vote in November that she
organized a bus trip of nurses to the convention in Boston to vote against
ending affiliation with the national group.

Although she shares the same concerns Healey and Powers do - they all agree
there should be a single-payer health system, for instance - Charest says the
change of makeup of the 14-member board so that it now includes only staff
nurses and the attendant firing of several paid MNA executive officers, was a
"hostile takeover."

Charest thinks the state organization will be greatly diminished by splitting
from the ANA. The national group, for instance, has five lobbyists in
Washington, D.C., who are responsive to the entire membership and have the
expertise to advance all nurses' agendas, she said.

The MNA on its own, "is not going to be such a forceful committee," Charest
said. "But it will be more focused; they will target what they want to deal
with, and go at it more aggressively."

Charest is not particularly hopeful that large-scale changes in the health
care system - to a single-payer system, for instance - are imminent.
"Congress couldn't pass a health care bill of rights. Hillary didn't get very
far ... The climate is really bad out there for a lot of reasons, and it
doesn't look like it is going to get better soon."

Powers and Healey say they will focus on narrow issues and try to get state
laws passed for such things as abolishing mandatory overtime, which can lead
to double shifts. That, they say, will improve conditions for nurses and
patients.

"All of the legislation that has been of benefit we have pushed for through
our own state organization," Powers said. She offered the so-called
whistleblower act, that protects workers who speak up about working
conditions as an example.

"Right now, we are facing one of the most severe nursing shortages in the
history of nursing," Powers said. "We need to work very diligently to protect
out nursing practice and the environment we work in."

Charest just doesn't think creating splinter groups within the field of
nursing is the optimal way to achieve that goal. "There are just better
approaches to how we think we can get to the main event," she said, "and get
the biggest punch for our energy sweat and toil."

© 2000 Daily Hampshire Gazette

---------------------------------------------

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