The nurses—from the United American Nurses (UAN), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Em­ploy­ees (AFSCME), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federa­tion of Teachers (AFT), the Ameri­can Fed­eration of Gov­ern­ment Em­ploy­ees, the Com­munications Workers of America, and the United Food and Commercial Workers—represented the 500,000 nurses nationwide who are members of unions affiliated with the AFL–CIO. The meeting on that rainy day was about the power of staff nurses who work together and about solidarity among all working women and men.

“Half a million nurses can’t be wrong,” said AFL–CIO executive council member Cheryl Johnson, RN, who is also president of the UAN. “We’re going to let Congress know what it takes for safe staffing, and then we’ll take our message home to our hospitals and communities.” Johnson introduced AFL–CIO union nurses who described the effects of unsafe staffing on patients. U.S. representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who will introduce the legislation in Congress, pledged her support. Nurses took their message to Capitol Hill where they told their concerns to other members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Power in Numbers

The UAN, union affiliate of the ANA, received its AFL–CIO affiliation charter on July 1, 2001, adding the voices of nearly 100,000 staff nurses to the federation—and raising the number of AFL–CIO nurses to 500,000. The following month, those nurses gained a vote on the AFL–CIO executive council when Johnson was elected a vice president of the AFL–CIO.

Johnson said that John J. Sweeney, AFL–CIO president, came to the UAN labor assembly and “promised support for nurses and for efforts to solve the patient-care crisis, and that the AFL–CIO would bring union nurse leaders together to carry out a strategy of mutual support.”

UAN vice president Ann Converso, RN, a member of the AFL–CIO nurses group coordinating the Safe Staffing Now initiative, said Sweeney has more than kept his promise. “All of us who planned this campaign are frontline nurses,” said Converso, “and we decided to go right to the heart of the crisis with federal staffing legislation.”

Johnson said staff nurses get avid support from all the AFL–CIO unions, not just those representing nurses. “They all want good health care, and they have more faith in nurses than they do in hospitals.”

Nurses share many concerns with other workers, said UAN director Susan Bianchi-Sand, a former AFL–CIO vice president who was also president of the Association of Flight Attendants. She said the AFL–CIO works for all policies that help working families and it fights those that are harmful, demanding protection for frontline workers who may come into direct contact with people with severe acute respiratory syndrome, for example, or insisting on proper precautions, training, and compensation in the Bush administration’s smallpox vaccination program.

Working conditions and benefits people take for granted today are the result of decades of work by labor activists, said Bianchi-Sand. “Weekends without work, lunch breaks, eight-hour work days, a minimum wage, social security and pension benefits, workplace safety laws, collective bargaining, and other important rights and benefits were fought for, won, and are still defended by the labor movement. Who would be providing the balance of power for working people if the AFL–CIO was not?”

Since the UAN became an AFL–CIO affiliate, the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) joined the Oregon AFL–CIO, and the ONA’s economics and general welfare chairperson, Debbie Lund, RN, serves on the state federation’s executive council, board of directors, and political action committees.

In Oregon, as in many other states, nurses’ unions have worked hand in hand with other unions for years, especially in state legislatures. “The same legislators we need as nurses are the ones other working people need, too,” said Lund. The public employee retirement system is also under attack in Oregon, as it is in other states. “At least one-third of all ONA­–UAN nurses are affected, along with all the other public employees and their families. This is a big issue and one where solidarity is essential.”

From coast to coast, union staff nurses have learned that solidarity pays off. In New Jersey, the New Jersey State Nurses Association (NJSNA), the AFT, SEIU, and the AFSCME work together on the state AFL–CIO’s health care advisory council. Last year, mandatory overtime legislation they backed was signed into law—after a five-year legislative struggle and a gubernatorial veto.

This May, New Jersey nurses introduced staffing-ratio legislation. “If we get this done, it’s going to help nurses and make hospital care safer for patients,” said Sharon Rainer, RN, the NJSNA’s director of legislative affairs. Rainer said that when all the unions with a stake in health care work together on a legislative agenda, the result is a more persuasive case: “Legislators listen when we present a solid front.”

A solid front throughout the United States is needed more now than ever as state budget crises threaten severe cuts in health care, education, and other vital public services.

As part of the Minnesota AFL–CIO and central labor councils, Minnesota staff nurses are rallying to stop the cuts. “We’re showing members and all Minnesotans that we face real cuts and real pain for real people and we’re telling legislators that Minnesota’s watching,” said Jean Ross, RN, the Minnesota Nurses Association’s economics and general welfare chairperson and a UAN director-at-large. Nurses enthusiastically support the campaign, said Ross. “Nurses see that if we focus on ‘What’s in it for me?’ we’re missing the boat. There’s value in standing up for others and saying, ‘We’re not going to take this,’” Ross said.

“Solidarity is an old-fashioned idea that a lot of people—including nurses—don’t understand today,” said Barbara Crane, RN, delegate assembly chairperson for the New York State Nurses Association. “But when you go through a strike, you see what solidarity really is.” Crane led 450 staff nurses from St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center, Smith­town, New York, out on strike when management refused to set limits on mandatory overtime and would not agree to safe staffing guidelines. “In the second week of our strike, when we were really feeling alone on that picket line, the buses rolled up and all these big carpenters and painters and plumbers stepped out. It was just amazing. They brought coffee, they walked with us and they supported us for more than three months! We were out for 104 days, from just after Thanks­giving through March, and they just kept coming back. Solidarity means you never, ever, walk alone.”

In medical centers and communities, in state capitals and at the national level, staff nurses are learning that solidarity multiplies the power to win fair wages, improved working conditions, increase respect, and provide the means to make patient care safe. “Solidarity is about working people being able to count on each other,” said Johnson. “Just as nurses need support from other workers, other workers need and deserve support from you, whether they are orderlies and nurses’ aides in hospitals and clinics or home health care workers, or even plumbers or auto workers or teachers,” Sweeney told UAN delegates in 2001.

“Staff nurses have a lot to win, and we have a lot to give,” Johnson said. “Working together with all of organized labor is the best way to amplify our power and achieve our goals.”

Suzanne Martin is the associate director for communications at the United American Nurses, AFL–CIO.

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