Massachusetts Nurse :: October 2004

President's message

President's address to the membership at the 2004 MNA Annual Convention

Karen Higgins, RN
MNA President

The following is the address that Karen Higgins, RN and MNA president, gave at the annual business meeting on Oct. 7 during this year's MNA convention.

Since our last convention, the Board of Directors convened 11 times for regularly scheduled meetings. The Board continues to work to make MNA the premier nursing organization in Massachusetts by working for and responding to the needs of our members. Our mission remains focused, with the following purpose:

• Protect and promote the profession of nursing.
• Accept and embrace the nurse's role as a patient advocate.
• Promote the access of quality health care for all.
• Protect the health and safety of nurses in all work settings.
• Enhance and promote the economic, health and general welfare of nurses.
• Promote the education of nurses, fostering clinical experience and activism on behalf of their patients and practice.
• Provide and respect workplace democracy for all eligible nurses who desire to exercise their right.
• Work in solidarity with any and all nurses who share these values for the survival of nursing locally and nationally.

Our primary goal this year again remained the passage of RN-to-patient ratio legislation. With all of you, as well as all the departments, structural units and Regional Councils, we did get our bill favorably reported out from The Joint Health Care Committee. With all of your phone calls and post cards and political activism we pushed forward against what was thought to be immovable forces to get our amendment into the Senate budget and very close to becoming part of the state budget.

We made it over so many hurdles, but we are not finished. Together we will get this bill passed. You, the members, have made it clear that this remains a priority and we remain committed and will not stop until we have safe staffing legislation.

We continue to work on addressing issues that affect us as nurses and the patients we care for, such as workplace violence, and are looking at ways to be proactive in reducing and/or preventing workplace violence. We are continuing to keep abreast of bio-terrorism preparedness and the many other issues of health and safety that affect us every day. This includes a growing focus on the prevention of back injuries for nurses.

Knowing that we are strongest when working in coalition with other groups with similar interests and goals, the MNA has forged strong bonds with our allies for quality health care and social justice for all. More than 70 organizations belong to the Coalition to Protect Massachusetts Patients, a group we formed to help promote and pass safe staffing legislation. We continue our commitment to MassCare, an equally large coalition of groups seeking single payer health care reform, as well as work with the Jobs With Justice coalition, which has made health care a key issue over the past year. As seniors are a natural ally of nurses, we have worked closely with the Mass. Senior Action Council to win affordable prescription drug coverage for seniors. And, working with all of these groups and coalitions, we were part of the successful campaign to pass the initial vote of placing a question on the 2006 ballot that would make universal health care a right to all under our state constitution.

We are now having annual Chair Summits to reach out to the local unit chairs to bring them together to set up the goals they want, meet any needs they have, and to discuss issues of concern. It is also a forum to be able to educate and address issues of both labor and nursing practice that are before us. We are also in the first phase of getting the labor institute started and plan to expand this comprehensive education program with members' input.

We are transitioning from Districts to Regional Councils. This will give every local bargaining unit an opportunity to work and build relationships with other local bargaining units, as well as local legislators and community leaders to build the support they need during difficult contract negotiations, threats of hospital closures and any other issues facing members to better advocate for the patients we care for. This will also be a place where the bargaining units and members within those Regions can use their Regional funding towards issues and programs that are directed at meeting their local needs. I encourage all the local bargaining units to get one of their members to represent them on their Regional Council.

I would like to thank all those involved in this transition for their hard work and commitment to making the Regional Councils reflect and respond to the needs of the members and bargaining units they represent.

We continue to watch managed care and the free market industry model decimate health care in Massachusetts. We are continuing to see our members struggle to maintain safe work places and maintain safe practice and fight to advocate for patients. They fight to ensure the rights for all their members and this Association continues to do everything it can to support every bargaining unit's right to fair and equitable contract. I congratulate all of you who have struggled long hours, days and months to make sure that both nurses and patients are taken care of and a fair contract was reached. We realize that it is not just settling a contract, but the continuous need to enforce it that is never ending. In response we have been increasing our staff to better able to assist our local bargaining units. We are also increasing programs to support these efforts.

As the nursing workforce ages, a key part of our support for bargaining units in the coming year will be to work toward guaranteeing a dignified future and secure retirement for our members through the negotiation of landmark language on retiree health and pension benefits through incorporation of Taft-Hartley plans jointly governed by the MNA with multiple employers.

We continue to work with our Unit 7 e-board and members who are under continuous assault fighting state budget cuts. These cuts are having devastating affects on those who are under state care and are dependent on the services that are provided by our Unit 7 health care professionals. They are fighting to keep resources and facilities open to those they care for and at the same time are being downsized, positions are being cut, and mandatory overtime is increasing.

All of this is putting both patients and staff at risk and to top it all off they are public sector employees and cannot strike. They are in contract negotiations now and the governor is seeking more than 40 proposals that if accepted, would remove nearly every union right of our public sector workforce.

The state's treatment of our public sector members is a disgrace, and the MNA will continue to support and assist Unit 7 in their fight to care for their patients and make sure patients are safe, and that they retain each and every right they have fought so hard to attain.

We will expand our support for all nurses' efforts to unionize believing this makes us a stronger and more effective force on health care issues and better able to advocate for both patients and nurses. Believing this, we continue to support an organizing department to be able to accomplish this. We will remain active on the national front, working with other independent nursing groups with the same core values on frontline nursing issues at a national level. We recognize the need to have a presence in Washington and do so through the AARN making sure that the over 80,000 frontline nurses represented are heard at a national level.

These are just some of the MNA's activities over the past year, and I believe they are reflective of what our members asked of us. But as we complete the first 100 years of caring for the commonwealth, I believe the nurses and the association need to also think of the future. We need to think of what we want to accomplish and where we believe we should be as an organization.

I thank all of you for your hard work advocating for safe patient care and fighting for the future of nursing. You are making sure frontline nurses and health professionals are being heard and seen as leaders in health care and because of all of you we will have safe staffing ratios in Massachusetts. As your elected leaders we will continue to work on behalf of all of you.