are of patients (Sargis, 1985, pp. 23-27)? Would collective bargaining weaken claims by nurses to autonomy in practice? Would collective bargaining strain the relationships between nurses and their colleagues who practice as supervisors and administrators? In spite of the misgivings on the part of nurses, collective bargaining did gain some degree of acceptance in the profession. The occurrence of collective bargaining by nurses, however, was not an indication of unified support by the members of the profession for the practice.
The 12 years from 1974 through 1985 were formative and development years for the use of collective bargaining in the nursing profession (Ketter, pp. 3, 9). The employment of the collective bargaining process significantly widened during the period. In the mid-1980s, there were some isolated indications that the nurses' attitudes towards the collective bargaining and the questions underlying the use of this process in the profession had changes from those prevailing in the late 1970s (Sargis, pp. 23-27). In 1946, the American Nurses Association (ANA) adopted an Economic Security Program which could be used as a basis for labor negotiations. Less than one-year later, however, the Taft-Hartley Amendment to the National Labor Relations Act withdrew the right of collective bargaining from employees of nonprofit hospitals. For most nurses, the Taft-Hartley Amendment ended any immediate thought of unionization.
The ANA, however, maintained pressure on hospitals to bargain, and maintained pressure on politicians to remove the Taft-Hartley restrictions from nurses (Ketter, pp. 3, 9). In 1962, President Kennedy signed an executive order granting the right of collective bargaining to the employees of federal health care institutions. In 1963, the New York state legislature restored the right of collective bargaining to the employees of nonprofit hospitals in that state. Finally, in 1974, the National ...