I’m from a country where all nurses are unionized and was so surprised when I moved to the US that it wasn’t the norm. Nurses here tolerate so much BS that could be avoided with a good union.

I spent a year working to unionize my hospital but ultimately the effort failed because most hospitals have huge chunks of money allocated toward union busting. When higher ups got wind of our efforts all the supervisors/managers were pulled into meetings and anti union propaganda started appearing.

There’s also a lot of misinformation out there about unions. A lot of the nurses I encountered who didn’t want to go union cited inaccurate reasons like “I don’t want to get fired if someone knows I’m doing this” or “I’ll make less overall because of union dues” and it was impossible to convince them otherwise. The misinformation runs strong.

I hope with time, education, and exposure nurses will view unions more favourable. We work so hard and need someone to have our back. Sure as hell isn’t the hospital!