Copies of this poster, designed by PEF’s award-winning Public Relations Department, are on display in state agencies and facilities where nurses work throughout New York.

Together, 8,000 PEF nurses can do a lot
Let’s get organized to deal with nursing issues, concerns

By LENORE BORIS, RN
Are you tired of working through lunch?
Have you lost track of how many extra shifts you have worked?
Are you concerned that non-nurses are trying to direct your professional practice?
PEF Region 11 Coordinator Pat Baker suggests we stop letting these problems drag us down and start correcting them by “organizing around the issues.”

Organizing new members
Union organizing occurs at many levels.
For instance, PEF’s two international affiliates — the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — are aggressively working to get more health-care workers to join these unions.
The more nurses and other workers who join unions, the stronger and more effective we all can be in achieving our common goals.

The SEIU Nurse Alliance sends “Flight Teams” to help organize these workers. Flight Teams include nurse members from SEIU local unions, such as PEF. These volunteers are trained to go to health-care facilities where SEIU is trying to establish a new local and talk to workers there about the advantages for nurses and other workers of being part of a united workforce.
AFT’s Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (FNHP) also has made a major commitment to organizing health-care workers.

FNHP affiliates, such as PEF, send nurses to join AFT’s organizing campaigns. These nurses, too, discuss how collective bargaining and labor-management forums can be used to address patient-care concerns, as well as better pay, benefits and working conditions.
PEF, too, is involved in similar efforts to organize both public and private-sector workers in New York.

Organizing ourselves
PEF’s member-mobilization activities are a classic example of organizing ourselves. The mobilization program is a formal, structured effort designed to involve all PEF members in becoming an effective force to deal with issues at their worksites, unionwide, and even at the national level.
The member-mobilization effort is PEF’s way to help you become a more vital and effective force in the union and to make the union a more vital and effective force for you.
So, when you wonder what can be done about your workplace and practice concerns, remember Baker’s advice: Organize around your issues.

Organizing both externally and internally brings together people who face common struggles. The collective wisdom and strength of that growing group can find and achieve solutions to its members’ shared problems.
Begin organizing around your issues by reaching out to all of the other PEF members and co-workers at your worksite who share your interest in the issue.
Likewise, if you volunteer to help organize prospective members for PEF or one of its affiliates, you will begin by identifying interested people and focusing on their shared concerns.

We can cyber-organize
Reaching out to other PEF nurses can be challenging and rewarding. The rich diversity of PEF is reflected in its nurse members.
You are men and women who come from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. You can be found at many different public and even private worksites, in many different PEF divisions, doing many different kinds of jobs, clinical, scientific and administrative, and working all hours of the day and night.

The logistics of trying to reach out to one another across all of these potential differences is very challenging. But it is every bit as satisfying as it is tough to do.
Finding an effective way to share information is essential.
PEF is developing an e-mail list of you, its nurse members. This list will become another way for you to share information with one another and the union and to quickly disseminate information so that we can all organize and mobilize effectively around the issues that matter to us.

To become part of this network, send your e-mail address to lboris@pef.org and be sure to include your full name, job title, employer/agency, facility or worksite, and also let us know if you are a member mobilizer or hold a PEF office, such as council leader or steward for your division.
Editor’s note: Lenore Boris is PEF’s nurse organizer and is based at union headquarters in Albany.

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