The Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (FNHP) welcomed nearly 1,500 nurses from Pennsylvania to its ranks Oct. 11 when the AFT executive council approved affiliation of Health Care-PSEA. The group, which has eight bargaining units across Pennsylvania, will maintain its affiliation with the Pennsylvania State Education Association while joining forces with the AFT's highly successful health care division.

As a gesture of welcome, three of Health Care-PSEA's representatives were invited to sit in on the entire Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals program and policy council (PPC) meetings Oct. 11-12, where PPC members took up the business of its ongoing organizing campaigns, its legislative activities, and the recent groundbreaking agreement between the Oregon FNHP (and seven other international unions) and the nation's largest health maintenance organization, Kaiser Permanente. Some 64,000 employees are covered by the national agreement, explained Oregon FNHP and FNHP PPC member Kathy Schmidt.

"It's not a contract, it's a national agreement that will be incorporated into local contracts--more than 30 of them," said Schmidt. From April through September 2000, hundreds of people worked on it. The agreement includes such long-sought items as joint decision-making in staffing, nonpunitive systems for reporting errors, and a significant financial package. (The full agreement can be found on the FNHP Web site.)

FNHP PPC chair Candice Owley told both the PPC and the AFT executive council that the division is "working with all types of nurses' groups across the country" in an effort to stem the decline of quality patient care. Pointing to a recent series in the Chicago Tribune linking cuts in nursing staff to patient deaths, Owley said that the fact that 80 percent of all nurses are not organized translates into a greater risk of dying when you're in the hospital. "We need to find a way to work together, not just for our [nursing] profession, but for you" [the consumer and patient].

Director of FNHP organizing John August noted in his written report to the PPC that "FNHP/AFT leadership has played a central role in discussions with RNs all across the country on the future of unionization. Meetings with representatives of the United American Nurses--the new collective bargaining arm of the ANA--and other meetings with RNs in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York and elsewhere give us a great deal of hope that it is possible to unify more and more health professionals in this time of crisis in the health care industry."