MSNA Affiliates with CNA/NNOC RNs

The Maine State Nurses Association has voted to affiliate with the nation’s premier organization of direct-care registered nurses, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. MSNA members made the decision in their convention in Bar Harbor on September 29. With MSNA, CNA/NNOC now comprises over 70,000 RNs in 44 states, and is internationally known for winning the first minimum nurse-to-patient nurse ratios in the U.S., achieving unprecedented workplace improvements for nurses and patients, and growing influence in the campaign to transform healthcare.

“This marks an exciting new chapter in the history of Maine State Nurses Association,” said MSNA President Maureen Caristi, RN. “By joining forces with CNA/NNOC, we are extending our unity from coast to coast and thereby increasing our power to defend and advance the nursing profession and safe, quality healthcare for all.”

“We are thrilled to welcome the Maine nurses into the CNA/NNOC family,” said CNA/NNOC President Deborah Burger, RN who was in Bar Harbor for the vote. “This vote, which symbolizes the growing strength of our national movement of direct-care RNs, sends an emphatic message of unity and strength on behalf of nurses and patients.”

“I see a day where all direct care RNs are united in one organization with a vision of patient advocacy as the primary agenda,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, CNA/NNOC Executive Director.

MSNA leaders say the affiliation will strengthen the clout of Maine nurses as part of a broad, activist national RN movement that is critical at a time of growing attacks on the rights of RNs, and a steadily worsening national healthcare crisis.

As part of CNA/NNOC, MSNA will also be working to enact national healthcare reform to assure access, based on a single standard of care for all, to the 46 million uninsured Americans.