Resources
Advocate For Yourself. Advocate For Safe Patient Care.
1. National Labor Relations Board
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) establishes federally protected rights for workers to speak with coworkers about your salary and work conditions, including on social media. It is illegal for your employer to attempt to suppress these rights. Know your rights!
2. Reporting
Safety concerns should be reported through your hospital’s internal safety occurrence system. If safety concerns, including ones related to poor staffing, are not swiftly addressed by your employer, they should also be reported to hospital regulating agencies like the CT Department of Public Health and the Joint Commission.
3. Unions
We enthusiastically support the right of workers to form a union and negotiate their terms of employment with their employer.
Unionizing is the process of you and your colleagues joining together to negotiate your terms of employment with your employer. In order to unionize, you must demonstrate to your regional NLRB office that at least 30% of employees in the same role as you are interested in unionizing. You prove this by having staff sign union cards and submitting these union cards to the NLRB. Once you have 30% support for unionizing, the NLRB will facilitate a union election at your hospital. All nurses vote, and if you win the election, you form an official union!
We believe in a state-wide CT nurses union similar to the California Nurses Association and Massachusetts Nurses Association. This allows nurses across the state to join together in supporting state health legislation that protects patients and healthcare workers. If you would like to join our effort to build CT nurses union, please contact us at ctnursesunited@gmail.com. You can also reach out to organizers at NNU and NENA for more info on unionizing your workplace:
State-Wide CT Nurses Union
Nurses unionizing at individual hospitals and affiliating with a state-wide nurses union
Would organize nurses across CT to advocate for state health legislation that improves conditions for workers and outcomes for patients
Contact us if you’d like to be a part of the effort to build a state-wide nurses union!
National Nurses United (NNU)
Fought and won safe staffing ratios in California
A union founded by nurses for nurses
CA based, does not have a strong presence on the east coast
North East Nurses Association (NENA)
Affiliated with the Massachusetts Nurses Association and nurse unions in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New York, but does not have a strong CT presence
Founded by nurses for nurses
Endorses safe staffing limits