July 4, 2006

Thank you for all your hard work and what you do to keep our voices strong. have a great day. 
Donna ~ Phoenix, Arizona

Thank you Donna and Best Wishes to all the great professional nurses in Arizona!

 February 3, 2006

 CITRUS VALLEY HEALTH CARE JUST VOTED CNA --THE ER AT QVH VOTED AGAINST --WE SUPPORT YOUR WEB SITE
 catharine jordan

Thank you Catherine. Let us know how things are going since your vote.

January 6, 2006

Thank you for sharing your experiences and opinions. I learned a lot from your site. keep up the outstanding work.
irma cooper, RN, MS, CNs

Thank you Irma!

June 15, 2005

To all of you at Cedars-Sinai who have been so steadfast in your opposition to the CNA, my hat is off to you for your courage and conviction.  Please know that you are an inspiration to those of us who are fighting the same battle.  I think the CNA has grossly underestimated the vision and tenacity of those of us committed to true excellence in patient care.  On behalf of the nurses at Scripps Encinitas who believe that we are fully capable of empowering ourselves without union influence, thank you for your example and support.
Sincerely, Russell J. Fagnant, RN

Thank you Scripps Encinatas Nurses !!!
We proudly support your efforts
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NATIONAL NURSES WEEK MESSAGES
MAY 6, 2005
One voice has been an inspiration and a guide, reminding nurses that what we say and do means so much to so many. One voice promotes individuality at the same time reminds us that we as nurses are a team of professionals and our words and our actions greatly influence the public's perception of all nurses. Thank you Suzanne and thank you onevoice-ourvoice.
Sherwood Cox, R.N., CCRN
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MAY 10, 2005
This is a wonderful site, easy to navigate, nice to look at and the message is one I have been looking for for years. I am an RN at Kaweah Delta Health Care District in Visalia Ca. I currently work full time in IS as a clinical specialist and still work part time as House Supervisor on weekends. I graduated from our local community college over 20 years ago, went on to get my BSN then my MSN/MBA.  I have never felt that the unions represented nursing well. The staff nurses I work with on the weekends tell me that they like the idea of having fewer patients, but telling the staff nurses how to cover their breaks or make their assignments is not recognizing them as professionals who are capable of doing this.  I will be sharing this site with everyone I can think of! Thank you,
Denise Tyler RN BC, MSN/MBA

THANK YOU DENISE...We appreciate your support.
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Messages received after the CNA withdrew from the October 2004 VOTE
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October 15, 2004
INCREDIBLE!!!!
Congratulations. I cannot recall hearing this happen anywhere, ever.
Great work.
Sincerely,
Donna RN

October 13, 2004
Good for you. You don't know how I lament where my union dues go yearly and now with an election year hot and heavy my money is going no where near the candidates I will vote for or for the causes I support. You are brave as the unions can reek fear...they used to serve a purpose and now serve themselves.
Congratulations! Margo ~ Iowa

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Very glad for you guys in your union fight. Illigitimus carbarundum!!

Best wishes, Dr. Joe Black~ Hilton Head Island, S.C.

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October 3, 2004

I share the opinions of those nurses who wish to remain accountable and responsible for their practice. The unions will change nothing, in my estimation, for the better. I consider myself a professional. My dad was a HR Director for a large automobile maker. You could always tell when he was going though union negotiations.

After years of dinner table talk, I decided that I wanted to be educated and a professional person rather than be an hourly employee and subject to union activity. So who comes into the fray? The teamsters want to advocate for nurses? I don\'t think so! That\'s almost as rich as corporate America thinking they could do a better job with running hospitals. \"See Tenet run\".
Sheila RN Clinical Education
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Messages received after CNA placed full page ads in several
area newspapers that were derogatory and negative about CSMC:

September 11, 2004
You are right on the money! I have seen a copy of this ad and I find it absolutely deplorable. The CNA in their quest for your dues money have bitten the very hands that they want to feed them. Don't they realize that Professional Nurses take great pride and ownership of not only their profession but the institution that employs them. By seeking out patient complaints the CNA jeopardizes the reputation of the Nurses and other professionals that are employed there.

The CNA has caused the reputation of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Nurses employed there to come into question.
The dedication and hard work have now been placed under a magnifying glass, all for the sake of the greed of the CNA.

Sherwood Cox RN CCRN
Western Medical Center - Santa Ana

August 31, 2004
Wow, Suzanne! I love your attitude. You are sweet and gentle, but when the situation calls for it you put out a strong "call to arms". You will prevail, I just know it! The more time that goes by, the more your nurses will see the underhanded tactics of the union. My thoughts are with you every day.

Patti
KeepeEnloeFree.org
Enloe Med Ctr, Chico

Nurses are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. We should all be able to sit down together and work on our problems
in a professional manner for the betterment of ALL.

January 9, 2004
A message from an RN in Orange County, CA
Name: Theresa Rifkin RN

I am a critical care nurse working for a tenet hospital in Orange County, CA.
I applaud you in your efforts to keep nurses union free, and agree that as
nurses our voice can and will be heard without the need to pay a union to
speak and decide for us. We as RN\'s provide care to patients who need us,
educate them and their families every day. Our care, compassion and
Voice is what they need. We all ready have what we need,
our care compassion and Voice for eachother.
THANK YOU Theresa !

You see, I am currently a scab. Not by virtue of working for a company  that supplies nurses to hospitals when a nursing strike occurs, but because I continue to cross a picket line where a number of our nurses are on strike. I would do it again.

I hear the complaints and I have objectively looked at them. I find the complaints to be invalid. It took almost a year for the complaints to be uniform across all the strikers. Before that it was a collection of personal agendas. The contract proposals are so transparent you can almost tell who suggested them.

I listen to the mantra of collective voice and have to chuckle to myself. How in the world is splitting the nursing voice between competing unions a collective nursing voice? It seems almost comical. Besides, the lack of voice is not really the problem I perceive, a lack of knowledge about how to efffectively use the voice nursing has is the root of the problem and not likely to be solved by union tactics.

As I said, a nursing strike is in progress where I am employed. From experience, this strike has done more to divide the nursing voice than one could hope to repair in a lifetime.

The crux of the matter seems to be union security. Don't laugh they actually admit this. I don't see how this has anything to do with patient care or working conditions or nursing. That issue is purely about the union. The way I see it, the constitution provides for freedom of association, but if the freedom to refrain from association is not also implied, freedom of association itself is a worthless tenet.

Good luck as you debate this matter. I have undertaken this as a thesis project.

THANK YOU Sarah

September 23, 2003
Dear Colleagues;
I was an RN working at a Family Practice Clinic under the auspices of Mercy Methodist Hospital in Sacramento when the regular hospital RNs voted the CNA in to speak for them. Since I had no nurse manager, being the only RN at the clinic, I was unaware that I would owe dues to the CNA and was given no form to sign to authorize them to withhold dues from my check. Lo, and behold, six months later I get a bill from the CNA for the entire arrearage of my dues to them. It was several hundred dollars!
They said I had to pay half of it *immediately* or my employer would be forced to terminate me. I made very little money compared to the hospital RNs, and felt all along that the CNA wasn\'t doing anything for them that they couldn't do themselves with a little less passive-aggressive (i.e. bitch and moan) behavior and a little more assertive team work. And in the long run,
Methodist still has one of the worst reputations for staffing and for wages in the Sacramento area.

The CNA didn't do a thing for the Methodist RNs that Methodist wouldn't have done anyway, except take their dues money and claim another victory. What kind of union threatens to have an RN fired for being ignorant of her mandatory dues? As it stands, I refuse to accept employment at any hospital that is unionized. CNA would probably charge me my back dues, plus interest and penalties, if I were to try for a job at one of their facilities!

And what kind of "professional" joins a union? Unions are for blue-collar service jobs. Professionals presumably have
the skills needed to obtain employment under their own conditions, or to market themselves independantly. I have never understood why RNs don't just stand together! The same RNs who refuse to attend staff meetings, and who gripe about mandatory inservices, will all too readily complain that management doesn't care about them. Please share my story with your colleagues. I quit my job at the clinic (which I loved) and took a job at a hospital closer to my home, for $10/hr. more than my "union" job, the same benefits and retirement, and no dues! That was nearly 2 years ago, and I am still irate at the gall of the CNA. My non-nursing supervisors were apalled, as well, and were told by the hospital there was nothing they could do. They even offered to pay my back dues, personally, for me! One does have the right, I discovered, to opt out of the union --
but one still has to pay a fee to them for their un-asked-for "negotiations" that they believe benefit the non-union RN as well, and that fee is (surprise!) about the same as the union dues. However, it is a philosophical option for those who are forced by their colleagues to choose not to be union members.

My thoughts are with all of you as you struggle to deal with this issue. Nurses are powerful, more so than we know.
Sincerely, Sarah Joyal RN,C
Sacramento CA

Another letter from a nurse who has something important to share with all of us. Thank you Theresa!

Dear Fellow Registered Nurses, July 16, 2003

My name is Theresa Bailey and I am a Registered Nurse who crossed the CNA picket line twice at Doctor's, Medical Center in San Pablo, Ca. I have been a dedicated nurse for over 30 years, and a member in good standing of CNA for many years. I supported CNA, believing it was a professional union and would help me care for my patients.

CNA has called two strikes at our hospital: the first a one day strike on the first day of our JCAHO visit, and the second one called November 4th, 2002. I crossed the picket line both times. As a result of my experience, I now believe that professional nurses do not abandon their patients and should not give their voice to an outside union organization, such as the CNA.

CNA called a strike for Registered Nurses at Doctor's on November 4th, 2002. Twenty-six nurses crossed the picket line that morning and in the past eight months, an additional hundred have joined us. CNA threatened they were going to fine me half of my monthly salary for November, December & January. Several of us engaged an attorney to protect ourselves from CNA.

Today, the strike continues and nurses are being permanently replaced. Thus far, 18 nurses have been permanently replaced and in my unit, the SICU, all of our day jobs have been filled.

I am here to tell you that unions and strikes are not good for the patients or the nurses represented. Many patients were frightened by the threat of loss of care and hundreds of nurses have lost their income, benefits and friendships of many years.

If I had it to do over again, I would encourage every nurse to "Do Your Homework". Educate yourself. Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself. Question everything you hear and ask yourself. . .

Do Professional nurses abandon their patients? Where does all the money go that the union collects in dues? Why do I need to pay dues to get things done that may not be important to me? Am I prepared to give up my income, medical insurance and other benefits to support the union agenda? Do I really want to give away my voice to a small union bargaining committee and trust that they will best represent my individual needs? A union is allowed to make promises they cannot execute; can they make good on these promises? What is a defined pension plan? Since defined pensions are usually not secure if a company is in financial distress, who will take care of me if the money is gone? We had a defined pension plan, and the hospital used some of that money during a severe financial crisis. Why wouldn't I rather have control of the security of my own retirement money with a 401k?

These are just a few of the questions I hope you ask yourself in the coming months. I urge you to find out as much information as you can before making your decision. It is an important decision that could affect your job security, financial welfare and future career. Theresa Bailey, R.N.