Oregon Nurses Association joins American Federation of Teachers
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
At a specially-called delegates
meeting March 16 in Portland, elected
officers of 10,400-member Oregon
Nurses Association (ONA) ratified a
proposal to affiliate with 850,000-
member American Federation of
Teachers (AFT). The move is the latest
in a series of realignments in which
unionized nurses have consolidated
into several national formations.
Benefits of belonging
RN Paul Goldberg, ONA’s assistant
executive director of labor relations,
said affiliating with AFT will enhance
the voice and power of nurses within
Oregon and across the country, at a
time when hospitals are consolidating
and becoming more formidable adver-
saries. Goldberg said nurses are headed
for turbulence with the changes to the
health care industry brought about by
the Affordable Care Act. Hospitals are
reacting to uncertainty with cost-cut-
ting measures, Goldberg said, includ-
ing tightened nurse staffing levels, and
efforts to have less skilled workers do
the work of RNs.
Though designated as AFT Local
5905, ONA remains autonomous, keep-
ing its name, leadership, staff, and by-
laws. It also continues as a part of NFN,
which becomes a new unit of AFT.
ONA thus becomes the fourth au-
tonomous AFT affiliate in Oregon. The
others are 8,700-member AFT-Oregon
(which represents community college
faculty and support staff at K-12
schools); 18,600-member Oregon
School Employees Association
(OSEA), an independent union of K-12
classified employees that joined AFT
in 2008; and 3,100-member Oregon
Federation of Nurses and Health Pro-
fessionals, which represents most RNs
at Kaiser Permanente. [ONA represents
10,400 RNs in about 50 separate bar-
gaining units around the state, includ-
ing Oregon Health and Science Uni-
versity (OHSU), and most hospitals in
the Providence chain.]
Through all the reorganizations,
ONA never left the Oregon AFL-CIO.
ONA’s affiliation brings AFT’s mem-
bership total within the Oregon AFL-
CIO to 40,800; that makes AFT the
110,000-member state federation’s
most populous union.
Legacy Health Systems is the only
major hospital chain in the Portland area
where RNs are nonunion, and outside
Portland, Salem Hospital is the only
other large hospital with nonunion RNs.
Fracture and reunion as nurses unions shift alignments
Once upon a time, “nurse organi-
zation” meant the American Nurses
Association (ANA). ANA is a pro-
fessional association for registered
nurses (RNs), and has state-level af-
filiates, like ONA. But in recent
decades, many RNs came to feel
they needed not just professional de-
velopment but the workplace protec-
tions of a collective bargaining
agreement. Some state ANA affili-
ates became more like labor unions.
That created tension within the ANA,
which also had as members academ-
ics and RNs in management. That
tension led the California Nurses As-
sociation (CNA) to leave ANA in
1995. So in 1999, United American
Nurses (UAN) was formed as the
union wing of the ANA for state af-
filiates engaged in collective bar-
gaining.
Meanwhile, national unions like
the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT), Service Employees Interna-
tional Union (SEIU), United Food
and Commercial Workers (UFCW),
and the Teamsters had been engag-
ing in their own organizing cam-
paigns among RNs. With so many
unions seeking to represent RNs,
conflicts sometime arose, along with
accusations of “raiding.” In union
parlance, a raid is an attempt by one
union to represent workers who are
already represented by another
union.
UAN affiliated with the national
AFL-CIO in 2001, in part to stop
raiding, since AFL-CIO has rules
barring affiliated unions from raiding
each other.
Then in 2005, SEIU, UFCW, the
Teamsters, and several other unions
left the AFL-CIO. Though UAN
contemplated joining them, it re-
mained in the AFL-CIO. CNA affili-
ated with the AFL-CIO in 2006.
In 2007, amid fears that UAN
leaders were considering joining
SEIU (and leaving the AFL-CIO),
UAN affiliates in Montana, New
York, Ohio, Washington, and Oregon
(ONA) left. The following year they
formed a new group, the National
Federation of Nurses (NFN). NFN
sought to affiliate with the AFL-CIO,
but AFL-CIO rules say breakaway
groups can’t get their own charter for
at least three years.
CNA and its National Nurses Or-
ganizing Committee then merged
with UAN and Massachusetts
Nurses Association to form National
Nurses United (NNU) in December
2009.
Last year, NFN’s New York affil-
iate voted to secede.
In February, NFN announced af-
filiation with AFT, which was then
ratified by its remaining affiliates.
ONA was the final NFN affiliate to
approve joining AFT. The addition of
the four NFN affiliates adds 35,000
members, bringing AFT’s health care
division to 82,000.
Voters recall water district commissioner in union-backed campaign
Residents of the Clackamas River
Water (CRW) District voted over-
whelmingly March 19 to recall Com-
missioner Patricia Holloway. The vote
was 8,155 to 563.
Turnout in the special election was
28.4 percent. CRW serves about
51,400 homes in Clackamas County,
primarily in Oregon City.
Thirty front-line employees of the
water district are represented by the
American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
Local 350. Following years of internal
fighting, expensive lawsuits, and gen-
eral dysfunction among the five-mem-
ber volunteer Board of Commissioners,
late last year union workers took a
unanimous vote of “no confidence” in
the entire board and called on all its
members to resign. Two commission-
ers — Tami Kehoe and Barbara Kem-
per — did so. Holloway and Grafton
Sterling did not. [In mid-July, Mike
Cardwell, who had been a commis-
sioner since 2001, resigned, leaving the
board with a 2-2 split.]
Union officials pointed to Holloway
and Sterling as instigators of most of
the internal problems. Holloway has
$17 a month coverage
includes:
K NOW Y OUR R IGHTS
I F YOUR EMPLOYER FORCES
served on the board for seven years.
That prompted water district
ratepayer Naomi Angier, a member of
sister AFSCME Local 88, to file for an
election to recall the two commission-
ers. She got support from the North-
west Oregon Labor Council and the
Oregon AFL-CIO’s constituency
group, Working America. Together,
they collected more than 5,000 signa-
tures for the recall petitions. A clerical
error, however, disqualified the Sterling
petition.
Since then, three interim board
members were appointed to the water
district by the Clackamas County
Board of Commissioners. They are
Larry Sowa, a former county commis-
sioner, Kenneth Humberston, and
Hugh Kalani. They will serve until an
election can be held.
The water board commissioners
will appoint someone to serve the last
two years of Holloway’s term, as soon
as the election is certified.
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APRIL 5, 2013
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