California Nurses open formal office to coordinate union activity in Ohio

INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — Ohio’s chapter of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, which for the last two years has operated out of volunteers’ home offices, today opened an official brick-and-mortar location in suburban Cleveland where it will coordinate activity for the entire state.

The office in Independence will operate with one full-time staff member and a handful of volunteers to manage roughly 2,000 active members — the bulk of whom are in the Cleveland and Dayton areas. The California Nurses Association doesn’t bargain on behalf of nurses in Ohio, but it has been trying to build itself as a political force in the state.

“We have a one-year lease in this office, so if we don’t accomplish things in one year, we’ll go back to our bedrooms and our laptops,” said Marilyn Albert, a registered nurse and national organizer for the union who will head the Ohio office.

“This office means our organization has confidence in us,” Albert said “We have the facilities we need. And we can achieve the goals we want to achieve.”

The local chapter’s primary goal is to help pass legislation that would require minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in Ohio. In the past, such legislation has failed to be introduced in the state legislature. Last year, the legislation was trumped by the passage of other staffing legislation that left nurse staffing decisions to hospital committees.

Nationally, the union added clout last month when it joined in a groundbreaking three-union merger with the United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association.