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Spring 2005

Annual Conference marks 25 years of progress
in nursing unionism

It happens every year. And it keeps getting bigger and better and smarter and more user-friendly each year, too. This year’s gathering of the annual Professional Issues Conference — marking the event’s silver anniversary — was the pick of the litter, participants said, as the Federation of Nurses/UFT reviewed more than a year’s worth of battles, accumulated bruises, scars and triumphs.

A culinary extravaganza of a chocolate cake in honor of 25 years of the Federation of Nurses/UFT.

When members gathered recently for the yearly conclave — this year’s was titled “Where We Are Today” — they also reminisced about their accomplishments in the 25 years since their founding. They took stock of where they are today. They also made plans for — and speculated about — the future of professional nursing as a career and a signal part of the health care industry.

Looking back on the union’s history, Special Representative Anne Goldman remembered the days when trying to have a voice in patient care and trying to organize meant always being told “no.” She remembered the discrimination and favoritism, where nurses who were hired the same day and with the same credentials received different salaries.

“It was collective bargaining,” she said, “that saved us from being terrific individual beggars.”

In her welcoming remarks at the opening of the two-day conference at the New York Helmsley Hotel in November, Goldman noted how UFT nurses touch the lives of thousands of families and children every day in hospitals, at home, in schools and in nursing homes, and how nurses want to do it well.

“What we want,” she said, “is the ability to do our job to perfection; to make sure no one is victimized by the system.”

Special Rep Anne Goldman presents UFT President Randi Weingarten with a 25–year memento.

UFT President Randi Weingarten called the Federation of Nurses accomplishments “an amazing testament to what regular people can do when we band together.” She also recognized Goldman for her “vision, tenacity, savvy, smarts and compassion” in leading the way.

“When they kept pounding, pounding and pounding on you,” Weingarten said, “you figured out how to put them in line.”

Citing the “financial constraints and tremendous problems” facing health care today, the union president noted that “after years of fighting us, employers — the big ones — are starting to acknowledge they must work with us.

“The terrific gains you’ve made in contracts,” she said, “have not just been about having a bigger piece of the economic pie. You’re always talking about the quality of services we deliver and the professionalism we bring, too.”

Inventorying sites the Federation of Nurses represents, Weingarten found managers at: Lutheran Hospital “still on a learning curve but very educable;” Visiting Nurse Service “nearly house-broken;” Staten Island University Hospital “coming a long way;” with Jewish Home and Hospital “still thinking more about Moses and the tablets” and less about workers and patients.

She concluded: “You — like our teacher members — are professionals. You know your jobs. You also know the value of a union that keeps your jobs operating at a professional level. I am proud to be here at this meeting, which marks 25 years of successfully focusing on our pursuit of excellence in nursing care.”

Goldman and Weingarten agreed that while union struggles are always fought uphill and always come with new challenges, the Federation is stronger than ever. Weingarten singled out for appreciation the chapter chairs at each site: Cora Shillingford, VNS; Cynthia McDaniel, Jewish Home and Hospital; Renee Gestone-Setteducato, Lutheran Medical Center; and Nancy Bentsen, Staten Island University Hospital South.

The conference also provided its customary spread of in-depth, quality workshops. These ranged from “Health and Safety” and “Infectious Diseases and Nursing,” to “Women’s Health and Yoga.”

An afternoon plenary session looked at “The Politics of Health Care Issues” and the threat to public health coming from federal cuts to Medicaid, while guest speaker Mary MacDonald, director of AFT Healthcare, discussed health care challenges from a national perspective.