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A group of registered nurses gathered at the home of Mrs. Julie King on April 19, 1917, to discuss plans to aid the Red Cross in helping the soldiers overseas fighting in World War I. Seventeen nurses attended and they named themselves "The Honolulu Nurses Club." This was the nucleus that formed the future Hawai'i Nurses' Association, which in 1965 had grown to a membership of 915. Fifteen of the original seventeen members were:
Janet Dewar, Rebecca Dobson, Marie Duchatel, Mary Johnson, Julie King, Emily Kemp, June Sinclair Anna Torbol, Teresa Malcon, Elizabeth Williams, Annetta McClinstock , Mary Merrill, Lily Morris, Mabel Smyth and Olive Sill Mary Johnson was the first president.
The object of the club was "to offer services to the Red Cross, establish a benefit for a nurses fund and to promote friendly intercourse among members to the end that the profession may receive respect and support from its own ranks as well as the community." The dues were ten cents a month. On April 30, 1917, 67 more members were admitted. The committees set up at the first meeting were the Sick and Relief Committee, Flowers and Visiting Committee, Home and Entertainment Committee, and the Red Cross Committee.
In 1918, the organization was granted a charter of incorporation under the name of Nurses' Association, Territory of Hawai'i, Inc. The Association joined the American Nurses Association (ANA) in 1931, after the ANA approved their constitution and bylaws. Hawai'i became a State in 1959 and in 1960, the Nurses' Association, Territory of Hawai'i, under the leadership of then president Sister Maureen Keleher, changed the Association's name to Hawai'i Nurses' Association.
In 1964, the Association, at the request of registered nurses working at Kaiser Foundation Hospital and Kuakini Hospital, became involved in collective bargaining through the Council on Economic and General Welfare. In 1979, the Collective Bargaining Organization of the Hawai'i Nurses' Association was recognized within the Association bylaws, as a distinct entity with its own Board of Directors.
Today, HNA has a statewide membership of more than 3,500 registered nurses, more than 700 other heathcare workers, within seven districts, and more than 22 bargaining units.
The last few years of turmoil and challenges within HNA and without the organization should not be interpreted as a major surprise or a failure. It is rather a natural unfolding of learning about very complex relationships. HNA’s history since its formation has been one of change and growth, however slow it may seem to us caught in the tidal stream of the oncoming tsunami we are now experiencing.
AIn the past, people made mistakes; groups sought power or personal gain. As collective bargaining grew, rather than focus on a ‘professional’ organization, some forgot that they represented us, the staff nurse and healthcare worker. The overall effect of non-communication and centralized “leadership” pushed nurses further into ignorance and resultant apathy. These past leaders were missing a key element of a union culture, thus the community responsibility to its members as a collective bargaining organization was neglected. Our profession is very important to us, but as educated professionals and employees we also must take care of ourselves, our families, and our community by promoting our union culture. Rather than throwing up your hands now and saying “who do we believe”; choose instead to seek the truth, trust those with integrity, and work to make your union one you want and make it responsible to you. Join in participating however you can, even it is just reading the HNA newsletters to keep yourself informed from an HNA source. The elected leaders of HNA must continually reshape our union, and we must hold them accountable to our needs and wants.
The union in the form of HNA is transforming itself into a new entity. One that is finally responsive to us, the staff nurses and healthcare workers. We, the workers, will run our union, keep it accountable to us, and maintain its integrity by creating relationships with the membership and out in the community. Our loose affiliations with UAN, ANA, and the AFL-CIO is available to teach us, to support us, to cheer us on in all our future challenges but they are never there to control us; that finally lies with us, the membership.
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We must ask ourselves some of these questions and look at the facts:
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What interests are represented by the union’s top management, (executive Director, executive council, and unit chairs), in setting HNA’s strategic vision?
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Do we need a shared vision or a collaborative one?
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If we all are made to have the same belief what will happen to our spontaneous, creative change potential that we so desperately need?
HNA has been affiliated with ANA for over 80 years.
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The June, 2004 Special House of Delegates rejected a proposed amendment to disaffiliate from ANA.
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The October, 2004 Special House of Delegates unanimously approved new Articles of Incorporation which reaffirm our ANA affiliation.
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ANA’s national House of Delegates, with delegates from Hawaii, required each State Nurses Association to join UAN and Hawaii was given extra time, to July, 2005.
- HNA affiliated with UAN to strengthen our collective bargaining position in 2005.
"Our affiliation with UAN is long overdue. The union represented staff nurses need and deserve this valuable resource! It is also ethical and proper, as it was virtually mandated by two recent special House of Delegates,” said Robin, RN.
We can’t stay the same; we don’t want to be the same organization we were. To create a dynamic strong and innovative professional union organization we must move away from a centralized autocratic professional organization. We must remove the past of over-control and being over structured which merely stifled the membership into submission. Since the “wicked questions” challenging the extravagant expenditures in the past were not raised internally or debated on to improve or change things, it took the staff nurses, externally, to ask those “wicked questions” and create the growing tsunami. We are now emerging and accept our complexity as an organization, making the necessary changes, and continuing to grow a union, one nurse at a time.
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