New York nurses union merges with NNU, U.S.’s largest nursing syndicate
The New York State Nurses Association now is an affiliate of National Nurses United, the country’s largest nursing union, the two organizations said Thursday in a joint statement.
The addition of 42,000 NYSNA members brings NNU’s total membership to about 225,000 registered nurses.
The newly merged unions said they have a number of key goals. The first is aiming to get workplace standards to protect nurses from infectious diseases like COVID-19. They’ll also try to get legislation passed that mandates how many patients one nurse can safely care for and requirements for hospitals to protect healthcare workers from workplace violence.
“NYSNA, the oldest nurses association in the country and one of the most influential nurses unions, will gain greater resources and capacity, particularly in the federal arena, by joining NNU,” the statement said.
NYSNA pushed heavily for the state to pass a safe staffing law in wake of the pandemic. The state legislature passed that law last year, requiring hospitals to form committees to set their exact ratios.
In 1999, the California Nurses Association, an NNU affiliate, led the charge to get California’s legislature to pass mandated statewide ratios dictating how many patients a nurse in certain units can care for.
NNU more recently has been heavily involved in getting enforceable workplace standards protecting staff from infectious diseases.
It pushed for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to implement a federal emergency temporary standard amid the pandemic, and the agency did so in June 2021. The rule mandated hospitals and other healthcare facilities follow requirements around ventilation, physical barriers and other protections intended to reduce virus transmission.
In December, OSHA announced it would withdraw the rule, though it was working toward a permanent regulatory solution while considering broader infectious disease rulemaking.
NNU filed an emergency petition, but an appeals court in August ruled it lacked the authority to force OSHA to make certain rules, leaving discretion up to the agency.
NNU has a number of other affiliates, including the California Nurses Association, District of Columbia Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association and Minnesota Nurses Association.
Nurses with the Minnesota affiliate union recently waged one of the largest nursing strikes in U.S. history. In September, about 15,000 nurses across seven health systems walked off the job for three days in an effort to get measures to help remedy staffing shortages and turnover concerns in new contracts.
Elected NYSNA union leaders voted in favor of the affiliation during an annual convention.