In mid-April, our democratically elected leadership joined together in a Special House of Delegates to consider disaffiliating from the American Nurses Association and reflect on how best to ensure that staff nurses in Michigan are part of a strong national nurses union.
MNA has already proven that staff nurses can lead an organization without sacrificing our values and principles as we advance the voice of professional nurses. As we have done since MNA began over a hundred years ago, we will continue as a multi-purpose professional organization. Presently the MNA, through our Labor Department, acts as a collective bargaining agent for nurses who are organized and facilitates organizing for those nurses who choose to unionize. Our Public Relations Department works to enhance media relations and generate publicity around legislative initiatives, bargaining unit and healthcare issues, and communicates our safe staffing campaign statewide. Our Department of Government Affairs is an avenue in which nurses utilize their insight, expertise and commitment to the making of public policy in Michigan that makes a different for nurses, nursing, and patients. Our Nursing Department focuses on issues and programs that impact clinical practice, continuing education, and occupational health and safety.
While the individual work within each department may change at the membership’s direction, each department is valuable to the continued success of MNA. MNA will always be a professional association. Our status as a professional association is not contingent upon our state’s membership within ANA. Should MNA choose to disaffiliate from the American Nurses Association, we will continue to be an effective, pro-active, and professional voice for all nurses.
It is truly unfortunate that ANA has failed as “the” national voice of nurses and nursing. Something is wrong with an organization that professes to speak for the nation’s nurses, yet after one hundred years represents approximately 5% of the nursing population. ANA cannot be a considered a national leader when its voice is a mere whisper in the national press. The MNA is the third largest affiliate member of the American Nurses Association, yet our voices have fallen on deaf ears within ANA as we move a progressive agenda forward on behalf of our members.
MNA continues to work with the United American Nurses to organize nurses and support the ability of nurses to have a real voice in the workplace. We see that the demands placed on nurses to do more with less are causing nurses to leave the profession. While we advocate for mandatory staffing ratios in Michigan and nationally to address our staffing crisis, ANA continues to support a bill that embraces hospitals establishing committees to address staffing solutions. When the UAN and MNA worked with Congressman John Conyers to introduce safe lifting legislation, ANA would not join other organizations like the AFL-CIO to support the bill.
In 1995, the largest ANA constituent, the California Nurses Association, left the ANA and shortly after, the Pennsylvania Nurses Association’s union members left and formed a new organization. In 2001, the Massachusetts Nurses Association left the ANA over concerns that the interests of staff nurses were not being represented. Those three states now comprise approximately 100,000 registered nurses and continue to move forward.
Michigan nurses have proven to be sophisticated and educated regarding the decisions they make. I expect their decision regarding our national affiliation to be just as thought provoking as we continue to move in a direction consistent with our values. i
