Nurses union touts growth, 17,000 to 75,000 in ten years

http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_6850855

Nurses union touts growth
Membership jumps from 17,000 to 75,000 in ten years
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 09/10/2007 02:34:09 AM PDT

When the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee opens its convention today in Sacramento, it'll do so as a darling of the national labor movement.

The Oakland-based union has gone from about 17,000 members in California a decade ago to about 75,000 members from coast to coast, taking a lead role in lobbying for labor on national health care policy issues.

Maybe that's why the union won a seat on the executive council of the nation's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, last month, and why CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro was named a national vice president of the federation.

At a time when labor unions seem to be on the ropes — a Gallup Poll last month found

60 percent of Americans approve of unions, but fewer than one in five Americans believe they'll grow stronger in the future, and only about one in three say they would like to see unions have more influence — the CNA/NNOC's explosive growth seems almost miraculous.

How'd this happen?

"We stopped looking at our role as patient advocates solely at the bedside," CNA president Deborah Burger said Friday. "We're patient advocates for the entire society, for the community as a whole.

FULL story at link.

sweaty guys in wifebeater shirts. Only the state branches of the American Nurses' Association seems capable of organizing nurses effectively, and most state ANAs are not geared toward collective bargaining.

SEIU 1099 has an uphill battle.