Three Nursing Unions Announce Merger

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Article Date: 20 Feb 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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Three of the largest nursing unions in the U.S. -- the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the California Nurses Association and United American Nurses -- on Wednesday announced that they will merge into a single association that will be more active in the national debate over health care reform, the Dallas Morning News reports (Roberson, Dallas Morning News, 2/18). The new 150,000-member group will be called the United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee (AP/Boston Herald, 2/18). The group will be affiliated with AFL-CIO (Raine, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/19).

In a joint statement, the groups said that "RNs should be represented by an RN union." The new group said it seeks to "provide a powerful national voice for RN rights" and will pursue minimum nurse-to-patient ratios (Calvan, Sacramento Bee, 2/18). In addition, the group will seek to "organize all nonunion direct care RNs" and provide a national voice for nurses' rights, safe nursing practices and nurses' health plans. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of CNA, said the organization will support congressional efforts to establish a single-payer health care system in the U.S. Debra Berger, president of CNA, said that the three unions will keep their individual identities.

CNA represents 75,000 registered nurses in five states, while Maryland-based UAN represents members in 12 states and MNA represents members in Massachusetts and has organizing campaigns in New Hampshire and Connecticut.

Michelle Ringuette -- a spokesperson for the Service Employees International Union, which also represents nurses and other health care workers -- said of the merger, "We haven't seen the details and are looking forward to learning more about it," adding, "We're encouraged by the organization's stated goal to organize nonunion direct care RNs, and by its expression of solidarity with other nurse and allied unions." Ringuette said, "We're hopeful that this will move us closer to our ultimate goal -- which is to have all nurse unions working together to organize the 85% of RNs who don't yet have a union voice" (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/19).

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