President's message

Dues increase is needed to protect nurses and to change health care system

Karen Higgins, RN
MNA President

The MNA has made tremendous strides in recent years, becoming a more powerful, proactive, member-driven organization that has become an effective voice for real and important changes in the lives of nurses, patients and all who depend on the health care system. But as we witnessed in the titanic struggle with the hospital industry over our safe staffing legislation, to protect nurses, improve staffing, and reform the health care system in the way nurses know is necessary will not come easily—or cheaply.

The MNA has done great things, including winning landmark contract agreements with raises averaging more than 47 percent over the last 10 years; winning groundbreaking contract language to prevent mandatory overtime, on call and inappropriate floating; created revolutionary health and safety language; and developed the MNA into a powerful political machine. But all that has been done with a dues structure that has not changed in over 10 years.

We all know that everything in our lives costs significantly more today than it did 10 years ago, and that it is reasonable to expect that our professional association and union—which is being asked to take on more and more responsibilities to ful- fill its mission for nurses—to also request greater resources from those who benefit from those services.

That is why the MNA Board of Directors has looked at where we are and where we need to go as an association, and it has determined that it is time to seek an increase in dues to sustain and grow this powerful association.

One of our Board members recently commented that under the dues structure we are now proposing, all union members would be devoting a mere hour and half of their week’s pay for all the services and benefits they garner from their association—be it the protections of their contract, a voice on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill, or a host of educational resources and opportunities for professional development.

We believe it is time to provide the MNA with the resources it needs and we need to allow nurses and nursing in the commonwealth to fulfill our mission of protecting the public and protecting ourselves as we practice the profession we so dearly love. In supporting this increase, you are making an investment in the future of nursing. I urge you to come to the MNA’s annual convention in early October and to cast your vote in favor of that future.