10 Top Reasons To Disaffiliate From The ANA!

On November 9, 2000 a vast majority of our members (62 percent) voted to disaffiliate from ANA, yet failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to win our freedom.  On March 24, 2001, MNA members will once again vote on disaffiliation from the ANA.   Those who support disaffiliation do so because we believe the very future and integrity of the MNA as a progressive voice for nurses is at stake. It is important to note that nearly every major leadership group within the organization and nearly every elected leader of an MNA bargaining unit has signed onto the Pro Independent MNA Committee.  We urge every member to become informed about this issue and to vote to disaffiliate on March 24th.  Below are 10 of the most important reasons why we believe the MNA must disaffiliate from ANA.

1. ANA Affiliation Threatens the Financial Viability of the MNA –  The MNA currently gives $100,000 per month ($1.2 million per   year) to the ANA at a time when the MNA is struggling financially to continue the work mandated by our membership to protect our   members and deal with our state's health care crisis.  The MNA is in the third year of a deficit budget.  If we continue our affiliation,   our deficit will grow, and we will be forced to either raise member dues (something our membership voted against last November),   or dramatically cut services to our members.

2. ANA Affiliation Threatens the Future of the MNA Union — In June, the ANA will make it mandatory that MNA join the United   American Nurses, the ANA's national union.  If MNA is forced to do so, every MNA union contract, and any future effort to organize   nurses in our state will be placed at risk and open to legal challenges costing the organization thousands of dollars to combat.  Our   attorney, Alan McDonald, has strongly advised against participation in the UAN.

3. The ANA has mismanaged your dues ($1.2 million annually from Massachusetts nurses). This is documented by the Lang   Report, an independent audit of ANA's operations.  According to the report, ANA will be bankrupt in 2 years. To cover for   mismanagement, they want to dramatically increase your dues.

4. The ANA is proposing a dramatic increase in members dues – At a time when the vast majority of the MNA membership has   voted to end our relationship with ANA, the ANA intends, this June, to approve an additional dues increase.  In June, the ANA   intends to pass a $35 plus increase onto every MNA member ($25 this year, $10 the next, with an escalator clause that will   automatically increase dues each year with no membership vote).

5. The ANA has failed to adequately represent the progressive agenda called for by our membership in the current health care crisis –  While the MNA was fighting the deskilling and substitution of nurses by unlicensed aides/techs, ANA literature suggested   methods of working with such redesign initiatives and encouraged nurses to embrace change.  When MNA was fighting managed   care and market-driven health care, ANA endorsed managed care and market driven health care as viable and appropriate.  When the   Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the most devastating legislation to impact health care in our country in decades,   the ANA issued a press release praising it as an important achievement.

6. Staff nurses (the frontline caregivers who represent the majority of ANA members) will NEVER get voting seats at ANA in proportion to their overwhelming numbers — The voting ratio of the House of Delegates, the ANA governing body, is set up to   keep it this way.  The ANA has refused efforts to provide proportional representation to staff nurses. If there is no viable means to   change ANA then why do we want to belong to ANA?

7. ANA has failed as a national voice for nurses and nursing. Something is obviously wrong with an organization that professes to   speak for the nation's nurses, yet after 100 years represents only 7% of the nursing population.  ANA cannot be considered a national   leader  when its voice is a mere whisper in the national press.  According to Madge Kaplan, a national health editor for WGBH, and   confirmed by a recent Sigma Theta Tau report, nurses are essentially invisible in the national media.

8. Massachusetts nurses must keep precious resources at home to protect themselves and their patients. Outside of California,   Massachusetts has been hardest hit by health care corporatization and managed care. Tired and beaten by a "push down" system that   demands more and gives less, too many nurses are leaving the profession. We need our resources to pass a safe staffing bill, to   implement initiatives to address the nursing shortage and to work with coalitions in our state to create effective health care reform. 

9. Now independent from ANA, California's Nurses Association has the strongest voice for nurses of any state.  Six years ago,   they were the first state to suffer from the ravages of managed care. California nurses pleaded with ANA for help and got none. To   survive, they disaffiliated. Now they have the best laws in the nation to protect staff nurses and patients, including newly-passed   mandatory staffing ratios, effective January 1, 2002. California nurses did it and so can nurses in Massachusetts.

10. Disaffiliation will allow us to form a national alliance with other like-minded progressive nursing organizations.  The MNA   has heard from many organizations, and many more nurses across the nation and across the world who share our progressive values   and goals. Disaffiliation would allow us to build coalitions that can mobilize the 93% of the nursing population not represented by   ANA.

If you only do one thing for your profession - do this!
Vote for MNA Independence on March 24 in Worcester!
Doors open at 12pm — meeting starts at 1pm!
 

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