Nurses’ group splits at raucous meeting
by Anne Barnard, Boston Globe
December 2, 2000

Months of infighting at the state’s largest nurses’ organization ended with a bang yesterday as the group’s more radical wing fired two key staffers and ousted five board members, creating a new board unanimously bent on seceding from the more moderate American Nurses Association.

The vanquished called it “a coup d’etat” and “a hostile takeover.” The victors called it a declaration of independence by rank-and-file nurses “taking back control of our association” from managers and academics. 

Either way, when the dust settled, the Massachusetts Nurses Association had a brand new look. And a split from the Washington, D.C.-based parent group looked a lot more likely. Such a move could change the nursing landscape nationwide at a time of crisis in health care, because the Massachusetts group is seen as a leader on issues such as patients’ rights and nurses’ working conditions.

A majority of nurses attending the state group’s Nov. 9 business meeting supported the split in a voice vote, but they narrowly failed to muster the required two-thirds majority to pass the measure. Their opponents called yesterday’s move a “strongarm tactic” to seize what they couldn’t win in a vote.

The pro-split faction argued that the Nov. 9 meeting was stacked with managers who could get off work more easily, resulting in a vote that - in what they half-jokingly called an echo of George W. Bush’s apparent victory - did not represent the true will of the membership.

“It was clear to us that the membership wanted a change. We decided that it was our responsibility to make that change happen,” said board member Peggy O’Malley.

A new vote will be held in six months, probably on a weekend.

The stakes of the upheaval are large. The Massachusetts Nurses Association makes up a tenth of the national group’s membership and pays it $1 million in dues each year, but some members had come to see the American Nurses Association as a foot-dragger.

Board member Barbara Norton said yesterday’s actions “liberated” the group to work more effectively for goals such as federal and state bans on mandatory overtime for nurses. But Karen Daley, who as president of the MNA opposed the split, said they had harmed the cause.

“A political agenda has been put ahead of the desires of the members and ahead of the well-being of nurses,” she said, adding that after Nov. 9, “we all anticipated difficult months ahead, but we were hopeful we could come together around the issues that are a common agenda for all of us.”

The fireworks at yesterday’s board of directors meeting took Daley by surprise.
The first vote, 9-4, was to reaffirm a commitment “to do whatever we need to do” to make the split happen.

Next, the board voted 8-5 to fire executive director Mary Manning, who had spoken out against the split. In her place, the board tapped Julie Pinkham, the director of the Massachusetts group’s union and a vocal critic of the national group. Pinkham immediately fired Manning’s secretary, Emily Eubanks, and another staff member, Pat Brigham.

In protest, five board members walked out, including Daley and vice president Jeanne Watson Driscoll. Daley said she and others expressed plans to resign but did not formally do so. However, her opponents said they had resigned, and the remaining members went on to vote in four replacements - including three who ran for the board in recent elections but lost to the members who left in protest. Denise Garlick was named president, and O’Malley vice president.

The MNA is both a union and a professional organization, with most of its membership coming from union locals. The national group, by contrast, only recently created a union, which some Massachusetts nurses felt was not properly insulated from management control. Daley said that problem could have been addressed through cooperation; her opponents doubted that.

This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 12/2/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.