I’ll make this relatively quick as I am short on time and have a lot to do. This comes from the perspective of 35 years as an RN. There is a diary currently up trumpeting the endorsement of the American Nurses Association for Secretary Clinton. Entirely separate from the current primary battle, it’s worth a few minutes of my time to let people know a little bit about the ANA, since they pop up in various political contexts. A little history: The ANA and most state nurses associations were founded around the beginning of the 20th century as professional organizations. Beginning in the late 1940s, a few of the state organizations began to do collective bargaining and formed units within the associations that acted as unions. It was always an uneasy relationship, since the leaders of the ANA and of the state organizations were largely managers and academics — nursing school professors. They looked down on bedside nurse and were very uncomfortable with collective bargaining. The uneasiness came to a head in a big way in California in the early 90s when the staff nurses who paid the dues that supported the organization rose up and took over the leadership positions and left the ANA. Since that time, most of the states that do collective bargaining have left the ANA, leaving it as an organization largely of managers.
The ANA claims to represent all of America’s nurses — something around 3.4 million. I have made some effort on more than one occasion to find out their membership numbers and they never, ever publish actual numbers. But a few years ago I looked at their form 990 — the IRS form that non-profits have to file. I don’t have the numbers at my fingertips or time to reconstruct them but, based on the amount of dues income they reported, my best estimate at that time was around 40,000 dues paying members. And since those members are mostly managers, they side with management and against direct care nurses whenever the two come into conflict.
The signal legislative accomplishment of the California Nurses Association to date is the staffing ratio law that limits the number of patients a nurse can be required to care for. Multiple studies have shown that the law saves lives. Several other state organizations, with our help, have tried to replicate that law. There have been active campaigns in Ohio, Massachusetts, Texas and Illinois that I know of off the top of my head. And, in all those cases, the ANA and/or its state affiliate has sided with management in opposing those laws and played a major role in blocking them or watering them down severely. There is by the way a Senate bill for a national level ration law — co-sponsored by Senator Sanders.
Since leaving the ANA, the California Nurses Association has banded together with other state nurses associations that do collective bargaining - and represent the nurses who actually care for patients — to form the National Nurses United. I don’t have exact numbers at hand, but I think our membership is around 185,000. When we polled those members in July of 2015, they voted overwhelmingly to support Senator Sanders.
