Discontent of Nurses Fuels Growth of Unions

By NEDRA RHONE

May 22, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Overwhelmed by work and fearing a decline in care, more of the nation’s 2 million registered nurses seek support through unions--and California is leading the way.

Last year, the number of unionized nurses working in California hospitals jumped 6%. Last month alone, more than 2,000 registered nurses at seven hospitals--five in Southern California--joined the California Nurses Assn., which has more registered nurse members than any union in the state, a union spokesman said.

Nurses at the newly unionized hospitals said they made the decision only after many failed attempts to combat what they consider a frightening reduction in the quality of patient care largely caused by staffing shortages.

“We were very frustrated going to management and seeing them do nothing,” said Marina Bass, a nurse at San Gabriel Valley Medical Center, which joined CNA in April. “Instead of leaving the place we love to work, we have decided to change it.”

Nationwide Shortages

Hospitals charge that unions may be overestimating their ability to solve health industry problems and the reach of their organizing efforts.

“In the last couple of years, we have seen union efforts growing, but the majority of nurses in California are non-unionized,” said Jan Emerson, spokeswoman for the California Health Care Assn.

Emerson and other hospital representatives said unions are no more equipped to turn things around than anyone else in a state that is suffering disproportionately from a nationwide nursing shortage.

“Unless the unions can produce more nurses . . . I’m not sure they are going to do any better at solving the problem. The nursing shortage is our No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priorities,” said Jim Lott, executive vice president of the Health Care Assn. of Southern California, a hospital trade group.

Of the more than 130,000 active hospital RNs in California, about 41% are unionized, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau--up from about 34% in 1995.

CNA officials said the gains in a recent blitz are unprecedented. “It is the most incredible explosion I’ve seen in my career,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, a 16-year union veteran and executive director of CNA.

Service Employees International Union, the second largest group of organized registered nurses in California, has about 25,000 RN members, a spokesman said.

California is ground zero in organizing efforts because of the nursing shortage here and heavy cost-cutting under managed care, DeMoro said.

Steve Trossman, spokesman for the service employees union, said burnout from working too many hours, having too many patients and being assigned to units for which they are not trained has made nurses take action.

Nurses are so busy and stressed they “go home and call back to the unit three and four times because they fear they have forgotten to do something,” he said.

Largely because of union efforts, California is the first state to mandate minimum staffing ratios in hospitals and among the first to consider a bill to ban mandatory overtime. The CNA sponsored both bills. Other states have begun to follow California’s lead. Nationally, only about 340,000 of the nation’s 2 million nurses--17% percent--are organized.

Recently, Maine and Massachusetts joined California and Pennsylvania in breaking from the American Nurses Assn., which they believe is not aggressive enough, and establishing state-based organizations.

The breakaway groups plan to unite as an alternative national organization and have joined forces to sponsor a federal bill that would ban mandatory overtime.

Meanwhile, the union fever continues to spread in California, even in the southern half, where nurses traditionally have shunned unions.

In Northern California, where 80% of hospitals are organized, dramatic walkouts have become a common tactic among nurses demanding greater input in management decisions and improved wages.

Last July, 4,000 nurses and other hospital workers at 10 Northern California hospitals staged a 24-hour walkout, forcing hospital officials to scramble for temporary employees. Another daylong walkout five months later spread to 16 hospitals. The employees, represented by SEIU, protested low wages and low staffing levels.

Although walkouts have been less prevalent in Southern California, they are not unheard of. At Good Samaritan Hospital, organized in 1998 by CNA, disputes over wages and staffing culminated in a daylong walkout last year. In October, nurses were offered pay increases of at least 7.5% over a three-year period.

Registered nurses at two Ventura County hospitals went on strike in December, saying their ranks had been stretched so thin that patient lives were in danger.

The two-week strike and a later four-day walkout resulted in a 4% pay increase for nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and St. John’s Pleasant Valley in Camarillo.

“You get the question, ‘What can the union get me?’ “said Susan Franks, an emergency room nurse at the Oxnard facility. “All you can get is a voice at the bargaining table.”

Unions’ Rivalry

Hospitals say unions may be feeding nurses unrealistic expectations. “I haven’t seen any [constructive] action coming from organized unions about the nursing shortage other than to blame hospitals for it,” said Lott.

The union rush has become so intense that the state’s two major nursing unions are locked in rivalry. During the recent campaigns, charges of “anti-union” activity were lobbed back and forth between CNA and SEIU. Both groups denied directing union-busting activities at the other. Trossman acknowledged the groups have “butted heads.”

“The fact of the matter is there are . . . lots of nurses who need a union and the best thing is for those nurses to be in a union,” he said.

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Nurses Unions

The percentage of registered nurses at California hospitals who are in unions:

2000: 40.6%

1995: 33.6%

1990: 35.5%

Registered nurses nation-wide who are in unions:

2000: 16.9%

1995: 15.5%

1990: 16.6%

Source: Current population survey, monthly