Below is a press release detailing the successful vote today (April 30th),
authorizing the Massachusetts Nurses Association’s disaffiliation from the
American Nurses Association. The vote is huge victory for front-line nurses
who have long supported a split from ANA to allow the MNA to utilize its
resources to pursue a progressive agenda for changes that will benefit nurses
and patients. On Saturday, the Maine State Nurses Association also voted (by
an 89% margin) to split from the ANA. The MNA plans to focus its resources on
winning passage of safe staffing legislation, HB 1186, which would mandate
safe staffing levels in hospitals and nursing homes. Hearings on this bill
have been scheduled for May 14th at noon in Springfield.
MNA Completes Vote to Disaffiliate from American Nurses Association
Final Tally is Certified on April 30th With 83% Vote in Favor of Split
Vote Frees MNA to Set Course for More Progressive, Pro-Staff Nurse Agenda
Maine State Nurses Association Voted for Split with ANA on April 28th
(89% Voting in Favor)
The Massachusetts Nurses Association completed balloting today (April 30th)
that resulted in an overwhelming vote to disaffiliate from the American
Nurses Association. The final tally was 3,105 to 656, with 83% voting in
favor of a bylaw change to authorize the split with the ANA, easily exceeding
the two-thirds super majority required. This vote follows a similar effort in
Maine this past Saturday, April 28th, where the Maine State Nurses
Association voted by an 89% margin to secede from the ANA.
"There is a strong and growing movement of nurses in this country who are
looking for more proactive and aggressive approaches to the health care and
nursing crisis in this country," said Denise Garlick, President of the
MNA. "The landslide nature of these two votes demonstrates that front-line
nurses no longer support the plodding, far too moderate approaches taken by
the ANA. This vote will allow the MNA to utilize our resources to address our
key concern, which first and foremost is to pass legislation to mandate safe
staffing levels in Massachusetts Health Care facilities. It also frees us to
pursue alliances with more progressive, like-minded organizations on the
national level."
The final vote tally includes the results of a vote taken on March 24 in
Worcester, where more than 2,400 nurses attended a special meeting to decide
the issue. At that meeting, the largest gathering of nurses in
Massachusetts’s history, MNA members voted 1,925 to 413 in favor of
disaffiliation. By court order, that vote could not be binding until the MNA
completed supplemental mail balloting for nurses who couldn’t attend the
March 24th meeting because of work schedule conflicts or for religious
reasons. The mail balloting was conducted in April, with the final tally of
mail ballots completed on April 30. Per the judge’s order, the tally from
the March 24th meeting was added to today’s supplemental mail ballots to
arrive at the final vote. The counting of the mail ballot was monitored and
certified by the American Arbitration Association. The MNA will meet with the
judge on May 10 for a status hearing to inform him of the result, which the
organization views as a formality.
Those calling for disaffiliation from ANA raised concerns about the ANA as
being to slow to respond to a growing crisis in nursing, including the impact
of managed care, health care corporatization, short staffing, mandatory
overtime and other issues causing turmoil for nurses at the bedside. For
example, while the MNA is pushing for legislation to regulate
nurse-to-patient ratios, the ANA has proposed weak regulations that call upon
the industry to develop a patient classification system, with no requirement
that the industry adhere to that system. They have also promoted legislation
granting the industry the ability to experiment with staffing models that
replace nurses with unlicensed personnel, something the nursing community has
opposed for years.
"It is clear from this vote that the MNA membership does not feel ANA
advocates for the interest of nurses on the front lines of health
care. Rather its leadership is weighted toward the industry and as a result
the profession and our patients have suffered," Garlick said. "The ANA’s
silence of action on the issues of importance has been deafening — MNA nurses
as strong advocates for their patients and their profession are unwilling to
be co-opted by the industry through the ANA. And so they will move in a
direction consistent with their values and with the public trust bestowed on
them, they will advocate for the patients aggressively at the bedside and
external venues be it political, legislative or public relations — and they
will join with other progressive nurses to fill the void that exists."
Supporters of disaffiliation also raised concerns about the structure of the
ANA’s recently established national union for nurses, the United American
Nurses (UAN).
The MNA union membership had voted unanimously in 1999 not to join the UAN,
because they believed its governing structure was inadequate to protect the
integrity of the MNA labor program. The concern relates to the concept of
insulation, a labor term that refers to the amount of separation needed
between management influence in the conduct of union business. Under the
current UAN structure, the ANA Board of Directors, which is comprised of
nurse managers, as well as the ANA executive director, have decision making
power related to the UAN. The lack of proper insulation makes those who
belong to the national union subject to legal changes by anti-union
management attorneys.
The issue was intensified in December when the ANA/UAN voted to make
membership by ANA state nurses associations with labor programs mandatory in
June. The ANA also proposed and will seek passage of a "discipline" bylaw,
that would give them the power to sanction state nurses associations that
fail to follow their bylaws and their positions. The MNA believed if they
didn’t vote to disaffiliate now, under the new discipline bylaw, they may
never have that opportunity again.
"Our membership was not willing to take the risk of being forced into a union
structure that in any way jeopardized the integrity of our own union," said
Karen Higgins, elected leader of the MNA’s union. "Our members clearly
understood the inherent conflict of belonging to a union that was ultimately
run by representatives of the industry we sit across the table from every day
in negotiations. One of the hottest issues in nursing right now is mandatory
overtime. In fact, the current ANA President, Mary Foley, the person with the
ultimate control of the UAN is a vice president of nursing who has used
mandatory overtime to staff her hospital."
The MNA, which represents more than 20,000 nurses throughout the state, was
one of 54 constituent members of the American Nurses Association’s federation
of state nurses associations. The MNA, which has been affiliated with the ANA
since 1903, was the second largest state nurses association after New York in
the ANA federation. In 1995, the California Nurses Association, which was the
largest member of the federation, also voted to disaffiliate, and has
experienced tremendous growth and unprecedented success since and has now
grown to become the largest state nurses association in the country. In 1998,
unionized members of the Pennsylvania Nurses Association voted to
disaffiliate and formed the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and
Allied Professionals.
MNA’s Future is Looking Bright
Along with California, the MNA has been long perceived as an innovative and
progressive champion of nursing and health care reform, including taking a
leadership role on the state and national level on such issues as nurse
staffing, whistle blower protection, mandatory overtime, workplace safety,
and single payer health care reform of the health care system. A key benefit
of disaffiliation for the MNA is financial. The organization will now be able
to allocate the $1.2 million per year that once went to ANA for its own use
in support of the MNA’s agenda at the state and national level for the
benefit of nurses in Massachusetts. This year, that means supporting the
organization’s efforts to win safe staffing legislation to improve nurses’
practice conditions by mandating safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in all
health care settings.
With MNA’s new freedom, the organization plans to evaluate its current
working relationship with other like-minded independent nursing organizations
to create a more progressive, staff nurse-oriented national organization that
will give front-line caregivers an undiluted, uncompromised voice on issues
of particular concern to staff nurses. Work in this regard would involve
MNA’s members and ultimately would be ratified by the membership.
In fact, in June, the MNA will meet with the California Nurses Association,
the Maine State Nurses Association and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff
Nurses and Allied Professionals to begin discussions about the building of a
new nurse association that will include staff nurses and nurses who support
them; providing a forum for these organizations to push their agenda on the
national stage.
"There has been a lack of cohesion and a lack of a unified voice for
frontline caregivers in this nation that we are anxious to fill," said
Higgins. "While informal discussions and a working relationship have been
evolving between our organizations for more than two years, we are now in a
position to undertake the real work necessary to build something totally new
and powerful to change nursing and health care in this nation. Our plan is to
begin meeting to develop the core principles of a new national organization,
as well as to outline a possible structure that we can all take back to our
membership for further development and discussion. Unlike the ANA, no
decisions on a national organization will become a reality without our
members having the opportunity to discuss, define and vote to ratify such a
structure."
"We are ready and willing to join forces with other states who are committed
to fighting for frontline caregivers and for taking strong stands on patient
care issues and the protection of our profession," said Garlick. "This is
truly the beginning of a bright and powerful future for nurses, not only here
in Massachusetts, but anywhere else in this nation where there are nurses who
want to be part of a movement for real reform and dramatic change."
David Schildmeier
Director of Public Communications
Massachusetts Nurses Association
800-882-2056 x717 (Within Mass. only)
781-830-5717
781-821-4445 (fax)
781-249-0430 (cell phone)
508-426-1655 (pager)
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Community ¿ Workers ¿ Students ¿ Unions ¿ YOU
Step it Up to Demand an End to Poverty!
Students have been sitting in since April 18th. Hundreds of Harvard workers
continue to be paid poverty-level wages at the world's richest university.
Now it's time to take the call to justice to the streets.
LIVING WAGE NOW!
March on Harvard
Wednesday, May 2
4:00 Rally at Cambridge City Hall (Central Sq.)
4:30 March to Harvard
5:30 Rally at Massachusetts Hall, Harvard Yard
Sponsors: MA Jobs with Justice, Carpenters Local 40, SEIU Local 254, HERE
Local 26, HUCTW, SEIU Local 509
For more information, contact Jobs with Justice, (617) 524-8778.
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