The independent California Nurses Association is seriously considering seeking affiliation with the AFL-CIO, the union's president told BNA.

Delegates to the Sept. 22-23 convention of the 63,000-member California Nurses Association will be considering a resolution that would authorize the union's executive board to decide whether to seek affiliation with the AFL-CIO, CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said in an Aug. 22 interview.

"The labor movement is under attack by the extreme right" and if "it dies, we die too," DeMoro told BNA. She added that CNA is doing "just fine," but it "can't be good in CNA if it is bad everywhere else."

DeMoro said that California workplaces have experienced a sharp escalation in attacks on workers and their unions, led by "well- funded corporations and a governor who promotes their agenda. Increasingly, the assault parallels and reflects the greatest corporate offensive against labor nationally in decades."

"We need to lend our name and our money to the fight against the corporate right," she added.

DeMoro said that one of the reasons the union is interested in joining the AFL-CIO is because it wants to have a "serious dialogue" to get the federation's support for single payor health insurance, a "core issue" for CNA. "You can't change health care without labor movement involvement," she said, adding that no country that has adopted national health insurance has done it without union support. Affiliating with the federation would give CNA the ability to "get in and have that dialogue," she added.

Separate Charter Would Face Objections

If CNA decides to seek affiliation with the AFL-CIO, the union will ask for its own charter, according to DeMoro. The granting of a separate charter, however, will face objections from at least one health care union.

A request for a charter would be considered under a process created by the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 2001 that looks at a number of criteria to be used in granting a charter. Among those criteria are:

 Size. There will be a presumption in favor of chartering organizations with 100,000 or more members.

 Occupational or industrial jurisdiction. The federation would consider the potential for conflict with other affiliates that already represent workers in the same jurisdictions and the views of those unions would be significant.

 Exploration of merger or affiliation possibilities with existing affiliates. This would involve a review of the prospects of the group merging or affiliating either as an alternative to granting a direct charter or at some point in the near future.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO's United American Nurses--which also represents nurses--would object to the granting of a separate charter to CNA.

UAN President Cheryl Johnson told BNA Aug. 18 that she has no problem with the CNA "coming into the AFL-CIO if they come in through us." Noting that UAN is the largest union of registered nurses in the United States, Johnson said CNA has not talked to her union as yet, but she encouraged its leaders to do so. She, added, however, that "we have jurisdiction for nurses" within the federation so a separate charter for CNA would not be acceptable.

DeMoro told BNA, however, that going into UAN is "not conceivable." CNA is known for its political acumen and its militancy, she said, and is not willing to give that up. If CNA joins the AFL-CIO, the union wants to have a "more forceful presence" than it has now in California, she said, adding this would not be possible as part of UAN.

UAN is affiliated with both the AFL-CIO and the American Nurses Association. CNA, which had been an affiliate of ANA, left the professional association in October 1995.

There has been bad blood between the two groups with UAN charging its bargaining units are under "attack" by CNA, which is trying to expand beyond California (19 LRW 405, 3/24/05)  . Earlier this year, RNs in Cook County, Ill., voted to replace the UAN- affiliate, Illinois Nurses Association, their long-time bargaining agent, in favor of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of CNA (19 LRW 656, 5/19/05)  .

AFL-CIO Would Attempt to Resolve Objections

AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt held open the possibility that CNA could apply and be granted a separate charter.

Hiatt told BNA Aug. 23 that the federation has never granted a single charter without at least one union objecting. He said objection of any union in the same jurisdiction is a "major consideration," but added that where the process "starts and ends is not necessarily the same."

Hiatt said that when similar situations have occurred in the past, the federation has worked to see if objections can be "reconciled." That happened when UAN applied for a charter in 2001, he said, noting that several health care unions objected to giving UAN a separate charter. After some discussions, however, the other unions' objections were satisfied and UAN was granted a charter.

DeMoro Criticizes 'Debate' Within AFL-CIO

DeMoro--whose union has sometimes competed with and sometimes worked jointly with the Service Employees International Union in California--criticized what she saw as a lack of real debate during the past year over the concerns that led to the disaffiliation of SEIU, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the United Food and Commercial Workers (19 LRW 991, 7/28/05  ). She said that there were many issues that were not discussed within the labor movement and "this was a tremendous wasted opportunity."

According to DeMoro, there were no "real ideological disputes" between the disaffiliating unions and the other unions. She noted that the current leadership of the AFL-CIO and its programs were mostly put in place by those who challenged them. Presidents of the disaffiliating unions served on the AFL-CIO executive council as well as its committees for many years, DeMoro noted.

She also said that no workers or rank-and-file members were involved in the debate, no local or national forums were held, and no rank-and-file members voted.

"It was an 'inside baseball' discussion with staged press events which only demonstrated how ineffective the talks were in getting agreements to force workers from one union to another and dictate which workers would belong to what union. The voice of the workers was not only absent, their destiny was going to be decided in advance,"according to DeMoro.

No issues affecting the majority of working Americans, such as the health care crisis and declining wages were discussed and no real solutions to those problems were proposed, DeMoro told BNA. Rather, the specific proposals the dissident unions offered were "structural and bureaucratic, not programmatic." There is no evidence that any of these changes, including rebating union dues, forcing unions to merge, or giving jurisdiction to unions by industry or sector based on its density in an area, would solve labor's problems, she added.

Source:  bna.com