Court rules on supervisors

In what AFT president Sandra Feldman calls an unfortunate decision that "indicates how profoundly the Supreme Court misunderstands the day-to-day relationships between nurses and other health care workers in nursing homes," a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on May 30 denies some nurses protection under federal labor law. In NLRB vs. Kentucky River Community Care, the high court ruled 5-4 that nurses working in the nonprofit mental health facility in Kentucky are supervisory personnel, thus excluded from the protections of the National Labor Relations Act. The National Labor Relations Board had ruled that the nurses were not supervisors because their direction of other staff was based on exercise of their professional and technical judgment as opposed to "independent judgment," as required by the statute. The Supreme Court decision overturns that ruling.

AFL-CIO charters ANA nurses

The American Federation of Teachers welcomed nearly 100,000 registered nurses of the United American Nurses into the AFL-CIO in early May--an historic event in the labor movement. The UAN, the collective bargaining arm of the American Nurses Association, was issued a charter by the AFL-CIO’s executive council in early May. Delegates to the UAN’s National Labor Assembly must approve the affiliation at its June meeting. AFL-CIO executive council member and AFT president Sandra Feldman was one of the most vigorous champions of the UAN’s request for an AFL-CIO charter. "This is an extremely significant event that says a lot about the strength of today’s labor movement," said Feldman. "We look forward to working with the UAN on staffing and other issues that nurses want addressed so that they can provide high-quality health care." UAN director Susan Bianchi-Sand said, "Affiliation with the AFL-CIO unites staff nurses across the country with the 13 million working women and men of the largest labor organization in the country."