PEF nurses accept risks with rewards of leadership
By SHERRY HALBROOK
Never ones to shy away from controversy or leadership responsibilities, Dee Dodson and Christina Brady are good examples of the important roles nurses are taking on at PEF.
Dodson, a teaching and research nurse 2 at the state University of New York Health Sciences Center at Stony Brook, is not only leader of the large PEF division at the center and a member of PEF’s Executive Board, she is a member of the union’s Statewide Nurses Committee and the PS&T Contract Team.
“I feel privileged to be on the team and I give a lot of credit to PEF President Roger Benson for giving us this opportunity and responsibility,” Dodson said.
“It’s been quite a challenge to keep all of my bases covered,” Dodson said, “but it’s also very rewarding.”
The best part of serving on the
contract committee, she said, has been the wide exposure
it has given her to members and issues throughout state
service.“I’ve learned so much and I’ve made a lot of good friends,” Dodson said.
Finding ways to address nursing issues through the contract has been made more difficult by the state’s uncooperative attitude at the bargaining table, Dodson said.
“The state negotiators seem to be in a stall mode,” she said. “When I was appointed to the committee, I took a graduate course in negotiating. But the real negotiations are nothing like what we talked about in class.”
Not only are PS&T workers suffering because of the prolonged and unproductive talks, the public is also suffering, she said.
“The state’s pay and benefits are no longer competitive with many areas of the private sector, especially for nurses,” Dodson said. “We have a serious nursing shortage at SUNY and throughout state service, really.”
As the new PEF chair of the Joint Office of Mental Health Labor-Management Committee, Brady said she, too is hammering away at short staffing and many of the other issues on Dodson’s agenda.
Brady has served on the OMH L-M Committee since she was first elected to the PEF Executive Board in 1992.
A psychiatric nurse 3 assigned as shared staff in Schenectady County, Brady said she has seen a lot of changes at the agency and on its L-M committee.
“When I first joined the committee, it was huge. And we had regional joint L-M meetings every quarter. Now, after years of downsizing, the agency and the committee are much smaller,” she said, “We no longer hold any regional meetings and it’s difficult to get management to meet with us even three or four times a year on just a statewide basis.”
That’s why, she said, members of the joint committee have spent a lot of time negotiating a formal agreement that spells out the committee’s mission, who serves on it, how often it must meet and much more. The committee is still putting the final touches on the agreement before signing it.
Meanwhile, OMH budget issues are a hot and timely topic for the committee, along with a running fire fight over privatization, and upgrading nurses’ pay.
Brady said speaking out on such issues often generates as much heat as light from OMH management, but she’s not easily manipulated or intimidated.
“It’s challenging and it’s exciting,” she said.