Anxious Moment
ANA’s creation of labor entity worried the TNA

By Mary Ann Hellinghausen
Illustration by William Jacoby
August 9, 1999

In Texas, collective bargaining and unions are about as popular as ants at a picnic. So when the American Nurses Association proposed creating a national labor entity and brought up the idea of affiliating with the AFL-CIO, the Texas Nurses Association started to worry.

“We were particularly concerned about the AFL-CIO issue,” said incoming TNA President Alexia Green, PhD, RN, chair of the department of nursing at Lamar University in Beaumont. Green was a delegate at the June ANA house of delegates meeting, at which new bylaws were adopted that significantly change the organization of the ANA.

The changes created two parallel structures within the association. The new United American Nurses (UAN), a national labor entity, will support states that have collective bargaining units, while the Task Force on Workplace Advocacy will support the efforts of states that don’t, according to the ANA.

Just a thought

As it turned out, the delegates only voted to explore the issue of affiliation with the AFL-CIO, a federation of trade and professional unions. Affiliating with the group would have protected states that have collective bargaining from raids by other federation unions.

Green and others in the TNA were worried that an AFL-CIO affiliation would have undone all the progress nursing lobbyists have made with the Texas Legislature. “Unions are not looked upon very favorably in Texas. Bringing in a union affiliation would blow all of our hard work,” Green said.

The TNA leaders were so concerned that the ANA would move toward an AFL-CIO affiliation that they were prepared to call a special meeting of their own house of delegates to discuss withdrawal from the ANA. But “we came away from the delegates meeting encouraged we would not have to get to that point,” Green said.

The ANA is a long way from an AFL-CIO affiliation, and the concerns of Texas and other noncollective bargaining states would be addressed before such a move took place, said ANA President Beverly L. Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN. “Texas would be involved in moving from exploration to the next step, which is formal discussion,” she said.

The labor entity

The ANA has created the UAN in an attempt to strengthen collective bargaining states’ efforts to retain and recruit members. According to the ANA, 24 states or U.S. territories have collective bargaining for nurses; 29 do not (the total of 53 includes Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia).

The TNA did not oppose the creation of the UAN as long as the ANA also focused on workplace advocacy issues to aid noncollective bargaining states, Green said. That’s where the workplace advocacy task force came in. “The question was whether the ANA was becoming a single-focus entity or a multifocus organization, focusing on the many things the members need,” she said. “We were relieved that some compromises did occur.”

Malone maintains that the ANA’s new bylaws create balance. “We walk a very tight rope. It’s obvious we’re balancing our movement as much as possible. Our goal has been to create a space big enough for those many different views, to build a house that allows both,” she said. “I think we won, both for the states that do collective bargaining and for the states that don’t. We [nurses] are so liable to split. Our job was to make sure that didn’t happen. We came out whole.”

The ANA’s goal for the year 2010 is to double its membership, which currently is about 180,000 nurses, Malone said. To achieve that goal, states that use collective bargaining want a national labor entity to support them and help fend off raids from other unions, the ANA says.

An unpopular idea

Green says many Texans share her feelings about collective bargaining because it can create an adversarial relationship between nursing and management and may not accurately represent nursing issues. “What concerns me most if you deal with a collective bargaining entity is that their union representatives are not nurses. They’re the ones who end up negotiating with management,” she said. Striking and the perception that striking nurses are abandoning patient care also make unions unpopular, she said.

Texas physicians can now bargain collectively with health plans under a new state law, and the American Medical Association recently voted to create a national labor entity. But the Texas Medical Association is not happy about the national organization’s move. “We are not laborers, we are not strikers, we are not simply providers,” the TMA said. “We are caregivers who have sworn a duty to society.” Green said she agrees with the TMA.

Efforts to advocate for nurses through health policy development and the Texas Legislature have been effective with laws such as the TNA-supported Safe Harbor legislation, which protects nurses in whistle-blower situations from being fired, Green said.

The TNA will work closely with the newly created Task Force on Professional Practice Advocacy. Green also will be active on a special work group that will look at boundary issues and collective bargaining. Noncollective bargaining states want to ensure that unions in bordering collective bargaining states won’t try to cross the border to recruit members. “States want to maintain the integrity of their boundaries,” she said.