Voting

UDR Story

• Court Orders NYSNA Winners Seated

  In August 2011, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) conducted an election for a number of its officers and directors at large. The anti-incumbent slate won every contested seat, thereby gaining control of the Board of Directors.  According to NYSNA bylaws, they were supposed to be declared elected at the union's annual membership meeting in September and their terms were to commence at the meeting adjournment.  But they were not seated until October 27, and it took a federal lawsuit to do it.  What happened?  According to the Judge Richard J.

• Only half a vote for adjunct teachers
  Carmine Pesca is an assistant professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Hudson Valley Community College, and a member of the Hudson Valley Community College Faculty Association. This year Pesca ran for the position of delegate-at-large on the HVCCFA'’s executive board. He lost. But he didn't lose because not enough people voted for him. He lost because not every ballot cast was counted as a full vote. In fact, because most of the ballots cast for Pesca came from part-time and adjunct faculty members they counted as only 1/2 a vote each.

   
• In quest of fair treatment for adjunct teachers
• A flawed referendum for Massachusetts nurses

  Registered nurses voted on whether or not to merge their Massachusetts Nurses Association into a new union along with the California Nurses Association and the United American Nurses. The process was a disappointing beginning in the quest for what so many nurses want: one strong democratic union to represent nurses who are now scattered and divided among a bewildering array of competing unions. Of the MNA's 23,000 members only some 500 were able to vote in the union's referendum.