Massachusetts Nurses Say ‘Yes’ to RN Super Union

by Mike Hall, Oct 2, 2009

Delegates to the Massachusetts Nurses Association’s (MNA’s) annual convention yesterday voted overwhelmingly to become part of the largest registered nurses union in U.S. history—National Nurses United (NNU).

The new NNU unifies the 23,000-member MNA with the 86,000-strong California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), which voted to join the super union in September. The 45,000-member United American Nurses (UAN) will hold a vote on whether to join later this month.

The 150,000 front-line nurses work in 22 states. The NNU is scheduled to hold its founding convention Dec. 7-8 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

MNA President Beth Piknick, RN, a nurse at Cape Cod Hospital, called the vote to join NNU “a monumental step forward in the growing movement of direct care nurses to finally claim a national voice with true national power.”

As the debate over health care reform takes center stage, it’s essential that direct care nurses, those who spend the most time with patients, have the ability to make their positions known and their voices heard.

The strength of the 150,000-member NNU will allow nurses, says MNA Executive Director Julie Pinkham,

to raise their voices in defense of their patients whose safety has been compromised by an industry that puts business interests over the interests of sick patients.

Among the new union’s goals are strengthening the ability of direct care RNs to protect and improve patient care conditions and RN standards from coast to coast. It also will fight for federal legislation, including S. 1031—the National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act—modeled after the successful California law that established nurse-to-patient safe staffing ratios.

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