Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #121827

Cheryl Johnson, RN, United American Nurses, 8515 Georgia Avenue, Suite 400, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 301 628-5118, cheryllj@umich.edu

Without a union and a union contract, a hospital administration can dictate all the conditions under which nurses and other hospital employees work. Rules can be changed without notice, paid time taken away, mandatory overtime implemented, and floating increased. This affects nurses as employees and has a profound - and negative - impact on patient care. When a nurse is floated into an unfamiliar unit with inadequate orientation, when an exhausted nurse is forced to work a double shift, when nurses are driven out of the profession because of deteriorating working conditions, and when potential nurses are discouraged from entering the field for the same reason, the quality of patient care is affected.

This presentation will describe the difference a union contract can make to hospital nurses and to the care that they can provide patients. Through contract negotiations and union contracts, nurses have gained a strong voice in determining their salary, benefits, and working conditions via contract provisions that assure input regarding staffing levels; restrictions on the use of mandatory overtime; elimination of shift rotation, and health and safety guarantees. The presentation will further address the ways unions assist nurses' professional development via contract provisions establishing clinical ladder programs, tuition reimbursement and certification differentials, among others. The presentation will include a focus on the role of unions in legislative and regulatory initiatives of concern to nurses, including appropriate acute care staffing; limiting mandatory overtime; protecting the right to overtime pay, and a range of health and safety issues.

Learning Objectives: