RNs Working Together represents more than 200,000 nurses

To give nurses a strong voice in patient care, the leaders of eight AFL-CIO unions, including AFT Healthcare, have come together to coordinate their organizing and bargaining activities. The new alliance, RNs Working Together, represents more than 200,000 registered nurses.

The move will boost the organizing and bargaining strength of unions with few nurses among their rank and file, says Ann Twomey, a member of AFT Healthcare’s program and policy council and president of Health Professionals and Allied Employees in New Jersey. “It seemed to be the right and logical choice, especially with all the challenges facing not only labor but healthcare.”

“We have a big job ahead to fight for the quality care that every patient deserves, and win the respect and working conditions that will solve the nursing shortage,” says Cheryl Johnson, president of the United American Nurses (UAN). “RNs are joining together across our unions to take collective action through this coalition. We can’t count on hospitals to do the right thing, but we can count on each other.”

The coalition is the AFL-CIO’s first Industrial Coordinating Committee (ICC) in any industry. ICCs were approved by the AFL-CIO at its last convention in July to foster common strategies and practices for unions within a given industry.

The first priority for RNs Working Together is to mobilize a national campaign addressing a threat to the rights of registered nurses to exercise their voice as patient advocates: the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) expected decision limiting their union rights. (See NLRB story, page 6.) If the board rules that nurses who occasionally oversee others are technically supervisors, it would remove important National Labor Relations Act protections and lead to chaos in the workplace.

“200,000 nurses will be sending the message loud and clear that we are the voice of nurses, we are the advocates for patients, and we will not allow any of our colleagues to be silenced,” says Twomey.

Healthcare is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors of the national economy, employing more than 2 million nurses. While most RNs are not yet represented by a union, more and more are turning to collective action to change work conditions that endanger patients and nurses, as well as to win the pay, benefits and professional respect nurses deserve.

In recent years, union nurses have bargained contracts banning mandatory overtime, requiring hospitals to provide enough nurses for safe patient care, and protecting nurses from workplace violence and dangerous patient lifting.

AFT Healthcare leaders say the RN ICC will not be the only healthcare-related committee established by the AFL-CIO.

"We are committed to expanding this to all healthcare workers," says Candice Owley, chair of AFT Healthcare's PPC and president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals.