• Stay with ANA!
  
• Why it makes financial sense to stay with ANA
  
• MNA + ANA = RN Power
  
• We Lose Too Much If We Leave ANA
  
  

Stay with ANA!

The best and most effective way to confront our challenges and win victories for us and our patients is by working together as colleagues and allies to forge the greatest degree of unity possible. We need all nurses who agree on the major issues facing us to work together as closely and as collaboratively as possible.

There are those within MNA who want to go in the opposite direction — dividing nursing even more than it already is. Make no mistake, this is exactly what disaffiliating from ANA would do -- create new divisions, breakdown unity among like-minded nurses and create new factions within our profession.

As members of ANA, MNA is part of a national organization of nurses -- an organization that reaches into every state in the country. As members of ANA, we stand with nurses in every state who are fighting for the same things we are: decent staffing; an end to mandatory overtime; access to quality health care services; a safe working environment for every nurse; adequate funding for nursing education and research; and defending the rights of nurses to organize and to bargain collectively.

ANA is nursing's national voice. We, as members of ANA, have a voice in setting standards of nursing practice and in ensuring a strong, clear Code of Ethics for nursing. ANA pioneered research on nursing quality indicators -- linking quality outcomes to nurse staffing and skill mix. ANA is the only organization that, in testimony at a series of congressional hearings, linked health care errors to inadequate nurse staffing and use of mandatory overtime. MNA has continued to benefit from ANA membership in a number of areas. For example, MNA has received financial support, such as a number of National Organizing Campaign grants that have helped MNA achieve its continued winning streak in organizing nurses.

Disaffiliation from ANA would isolate us from information about national nursing issues, and we would lose our opportunity to contribute to the power of nursing's national voice. Our issues, however, don't stop at the Massachusetts border! From managed care to workplace safety to defending our collective bargaining rights, most issues that affect us affect nurses around the country and are influenced by federal legislation and regulation. If we left ANA, we would be faced with a number of untenable options—isolating ourselves from national developments, hiring our own federal lobbyists or starting a new national organization, all at enormous cost and the risk of fracturing nurses' voice on Capitol Hill.

ANA is a stronger, more progressive organization because of MNA's active participation. For example:

• MNA led the way at the 1999 House of Delegates for ANA to take a clear and vocal position for single-payer health care.
• MNA delegates took the lead in shaping a clear, strong Mission and Goals Statement for ANA.
• MNA delegates voiced concerns about proposed changes in the Code of Ethics that influenced other delegates to vote to send the Code back to committee for reconsideration.

Unity and solidarity are key to our success and future victories. If MNA left ANA, it would be a loss to nurses in Massachusetts and to nurses around the country. Changes should be made from within ANA, rather than by walking away. Now is not the time for those who share a common outlook and a common agenda to split and fracture. We must stay united or all nurses lose, because nursing's national voice is diminished. On Nov. 9, vote to remain with ANA.

Why it makes financial sense to stay with ANA

Do you want to sell your ANA membership for $85?
Make sure you know all the facts! Unity and solidarity are key to our success and future. We must stay united or all nurses lose, because nursing's national voice will be silenced. On Nov. 9, vote to remain with ANA.

Facts:

1. Currently $85 of your dues go to fund ANA resources and services which directly support MNA. The ANA represents our nation's 2.6 million registered nurses through its 54 member associations. It has been recognized for many years as the premiere spokesperson for nurses and nursing practice. It has been a strong voice for legislation, practice, and education. It is a myth that ANA has not been concerned about bedside nurses and bedside care. That is what ANA's mission has always been about.

2. If you attend the MNA convention business meeting on November 9, you will be asked to vote on whether or not MNA should continue its affiliation with ANA. Please vote against the disaffiliation. Vote to remain a part of a strong national nursing alliance. If you fail to do so you will lose your national linkage with an identity that goes well beyond Massachusetts. Proponents of disaffiliation will tell you that they are going to affiliate with other states. Ask them how they plan to do it? What their plans are for linkage of the affiliates of ANA? Ask them how much it will cost you?

3. If you vote for disaffiliation you will also be voting to contribute the $85 of dues that you are now paying to ANA directly to MNA. Your affiliation with ANA will be severed. Ask the proponents of disaffiliation exactly how these funds will be used to replicate a national structure that guarantees you respected input into national legislation including workplace and health care issues such as indoor air quality, latex allergy, needlestick injury prevention and federal policy initiatives supporting a single payer system. You deserve a plan, a time line, and a specific budget. If MNA disaffiliates with ANA, you will no longer have an ANA membership. MNA cannot replicate the extensive, experienced national network now in place. Disaffiliation from ANA will mean many losses to you. Are you prepared to lose: Your subscription to the AJN? The ability to track federal legislation at no cost? Member involvement/recognition at the national level through ANA? Member CE discount for ANCC-approved programs? Ability to provide input to ANA-PAC (federal candidates)? Role and practice diversity among our membership (nurse educators, nurse researchers, advanced practice nurses, nurse attorneys, nurses in administration, staff nurses)?

4. Proponents of disaffiliation will use California as an example. Are you aware that since their disaffiliation with ANA some local bargaining units in California have suffered marked dues increases. As of July 1999 dues in some areas of California are as high as $595 per member per year. Do you want this to happen to you and to lose your ANA affiliation in the process?

5. The financial issues are not as significant as the potential losses inherent in a vote to disaffiliate. Those losses are too great to measure in dollars and cents. Massachusetts nurses will lose their national voice. There is no way to replace our national presence and our existing partnership between the ANA and MNA. The real cost of replacing such a structure is staggering and the benefits we gain from being part of ANA, a respected, prestigious, national nursing organization are priceless.

Unity and solidarity are key to our success and future. We must stay united or all nurses lose, because nursing's national voice will be silenced. On Nov. 9, vote to remain with ANA.

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Read another opinion...

MNA + ANA = RN Power

The issues facing us are too big for nursing to be further divided. That argument and the effectiveness of our partnership with ANA over the years should be the basis for open and thoughtful dialogue as disaffiliation is discussed by members in the weeks and months ahead. An additional $1 million in revenues will be generated for MNA if the membership votes in favor of ANA disaffiliation and also votes to allow MNA to retain the entire $85. That's basically an $85 dues increase with no ability to give members assurances on their return.

What on the surface may sound like a good idea, does not add up when you look at it more closely and take stock of what those losses mean for MNA and its members. Past and present examples of those successful partnerships and benefits of ANA membership for MNA have included:

• ANA Organizing Grants: $485,600 over the past nine years

Since the inception of ANA's National Organizing Campaign (NOC) grant program in 1991, MNA has been awarded significant organizing campaign grant monies.

• ANA Practice Grants: $30,000

Two state-based ANA practice grants were awarded to MNA in the amount of $15,000 each. In 1996 MNA was awarded a grant to further the role of APNs in managed care. In 1998 MNA received a grant to identify correlations between increased incidents of complaints against RNs and health care system changes.

• ANA-PAC contributions to federal candidates from Massachusetts: $124,000

In the last three election cycles, the ANA-PAC contributed money and was instrumental in the elections of John Tierney, James McGovern, William Delahunt and Ted Kennedy.

• Other ANA direct support to MNA

• Strike support – picketers, ads, updates for members on ANA website and publications
• Letters, ANA publication/list serve information challenging BORN actions
• Protection of National Labor Relations Act in court cases
• Picket at US Nursing Corp in Denver, Colo.

• ANA consultation to MNA

• Laws/regulations on mandatory overtime
• New organizing
• Raids
• Health and safety
• Nursing shortage
• Safe staffing
• Medicaid reimbursement for all APRNs
• State needlestick legislation
• Whistleblower legislation
• Patient Bill of Rights/managed care reform initiatives
• Single payer health care
• Data collection/reporting related to ANA nursing quality indicators

• ANA national nursing agenda support from MNA

• Whistleblower
• Single payer
• Accept or reject a nursing assignment position statement
• Latex allergy, needlestick, ergonomics and indoor air quality
• Million MOM March
• Workgroups developing nationwide legislative agendas
• System errors in hospitals
• Involvement of 2,350 MNA members in NSTAT in 1999

• ANA media coordination with MNA

• Whistleblower – Barry Adams
• Needlestick – Karen Daley
• Ergonomics – Beth Picknic
• Strike – St. Vincent Nurses

Despite the impassioned rhetoric of proponents of ANA disaffiliation, many questions remain concerning the vaguely defined future for MNA with this proposed change. They include:

• If we break from ANA, what assurance can be provided to members that we will maintain any influence at the national level?

• How would access to policymakers and legislative leaders be attained? What would it cost us to build? How long would it take? How do we know we would be successful?

• What is this new national nursing organization that MNA disaffiliation proponents are speaking about? What will it cost and how can we be sure it will be more effective than ANA?

• Why would further splintering of the profession – to now become simply one of many other unions representing nurses – be in the best interest of our members or the profession at a critical time when we need the strength of numbers and a united front?

Finally, supporters of disaffiliation make it appear they stand for different core values than those of us who advocate for remaining with ANA. Those core values include:

• To protect/promote the profession of nursing
• To enhance the knowledge and promote the education of nurses
• To foster clinical expertise/activism on behalf of our practice and patients
• To protect the health and safety of nurses in all settings
• To enhance and promote nurses' economic, health and general welfare

We lose too much if we leave ANA

MNA members are faced with an important choice. We can maintain the historic relationship we have had with ANA—and, through it, with nurses in every state. Or we can leave—either to isolate ourselves or to try to recreate what nurses across the country have worked for over a century to build.

ANA and MNA share the same goals and priorities: a commitment to universal access to safe, affordable health care, safe nurse staffing, opposing mandatory overtime, securing every nurses' right to a safe workplace. And a commitment to ensure that every nurse has access to collective bargaining as a central means of professional empowerment, control over nursing practice as well as securing fair pay and decent benefits.

ANA has a proud record of advocacy for America's nurses. And it is a democratic, member-run organization that is open to change—and that has been changing. And ANA has shown an increasingly sharp and clear focus on the problems facing nurses in providing safe, quality care to patients.

The founding of the United American Nurses (UAN), which has brought together state collective bargaining programs into a powerful, national union, is a tremendous development for all of nursing. The UAN is not just the largest union representing nurses, it is the only national union devoted to nurses representing nurses. The establishment of the UAN means that staff nurse issues are up front and center in ANA—and that making collective bargaining services available to all nurses is a major priority. So far, the MNA Cabinet on Labor Relations has chosen not to join the UAN because of concerns over organizational and reporting relationships between the UAN and the ANA. But the leadership of the UAN and the ANA have made it clear that they are willing to look at what steps can be taken, including bylaws changes at the next ANA House of Delegates, to address MNA's concerns. They have already started addressing some of them in policy. So why the rush to leave now?

Massachusetts nurses need a strong national organization—we cannot stay strong and effective by going it alone. ANA provides nurses in every state with a national voice and with advocacy on national issues that affect us. For instance—no matter how strong MNA is, issues like protecting and expanding Medicare cannot be resolved in Massachusetts. Nor can fighting for strong OSHA standards for health care workers. There are many other examples, including fighting for federal needlestick legislation, for a Patients' Bill of Rights, for federal whistleblower protection, against AMA's sham antitrust "reform" and fighting to preserve and expand federal labor law protection for RNs.

And being part of ANA means that we can draw on the strength and accomplishments of nurses in every state. That relationship made a decisive difference in passing needlestick legislation in Massachusetts (see September Massachusetts Nurse story).

Many of the issues facing nurses not only require legislation, but an ability to help back up state and federal advocacy. ANA's pioneering work on research linking staffing and patient outcomes has been critical for demonstrating how poor staffing hurts patients. And in recent discussions and Congressional hearings on health care error, ANA has been the only organization to consistently raise adequate RN staffing as central to reducing errors.

ANA's political action committee—recognized as one of the most effective healthcare PACs in Washington—has been instrumental in electing candidates who understand and support nursing issues. This has made a real difference to Massachusetts nurses in ensuring that federal elected officials from Massachusetts are responsive to nursing issues and to MNA.

If MNA leaves ANA, Massachusetts nurses lose all of this. We can try to recreate some of it. But this is a tremendously costly proposition, and it cannot be done overnight. And whether MNA tries to develop its own Washington operation or works with other organizations, the most we can eventually hope to do is to recreate what nursing already has—and then have two rival national nursing organizations competing with each other in Washington. Do we need or want to have organizations that agree on all of the major issues competing to be heard in Washington? This only hurts all of us.

We can continue to work to improve ANA, to build on its strengths, or we can decide to cut ourselves off from nursing's national voice. The choice is yours. We urge you to VOTE NO against disaffiliation on Nov. 9.