One day, Ann Converso, an acute medical/surgical and I.V. therapy nurse at the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center in upstate New York, filed a grievance over a day-off request—and in no time, she became president of her local union. That was the beginning of a career as a champion for nurses and patients.
Converso cared for thousands of patients from 1973 to 2008. At the same time, she became deeply involved in building the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA). To Converso, her profession as a nurse and her activism in the union naturally went hand in hand.
"For me, my union membership was the ultimate professional voice to protect my patients," she later recalled. "My union gave me, as a bedside nurse, an equal voice in decision-making where, for a long time, RNs were treated less like trained patient advocates and more like handmaidens by hospital management, supervisors and doctors."
Her fellow nurses in NYSNA eventually chose Converso as chair of their Delegate Assembly, where she helped lead battles to promote needlestick prevention and ban mandatory overtime for nurses.
As a leader of NYSNA, Converso worked closely with other grassroots leaders of nurses. Many recognized a need to create a national union for staff nurses within the American Nurses Association. "Nurses are tired of not having a voice, of not being taken seriously and of not being able to effectively advocate for the patients that we serve," Converso said. So in 1999, at a time when unions were under massive attack, Converso and other nurses defied the odds and created the United American Nurses. Its mission: to be a vigorous, nationwide, independent voice for staff nurses.
Converso was a founding mother of UAN and was chosen to be its vice president. After former UAN President Cheryl Johnson died in 2007, Converso succeeded her and was elected president in her own right the following year.
In December 2009, the UAN joined with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Massachusetts Nurses Association to form National Nurses United, the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in American history.
As a UAN leader, Converso served on the negotiating team that won the first-ever national master contract for VA nurses, providing top-notch care for vets and increased respect and protection for the nurses themselves. Another of Converso's achievements was mentoring countless nurses in the union movement.
Converso led the UAN at a time of great ferment in American health care. As a leader of nurses and an experienced nurse, she brought credibility to debates on a range of issues. She spoke out, testified, marched and organized for causes including:
- Guaranteeing the collective bargaining rights of nurses when they were under attack during the Bush administration;
- Ensuring safe staffing levels in hospitals for RNs so they could properly care for their patients;
- Providing whistle-blower protections for nurses concerned about quality of treatment; and
- Establishing safety standards in moving and transporting patients to protect nurses from lifting injuries.
Some of her most critical contributions, however, came during the long debate on health care reform. Converso understood just how urgent it was. "Our nurses see every day in our work the results of a health care system that allows far too many people to fall through the cracks at too great a cost," she said.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council benefited from her contributions as a member and as a member of our Health Care Reform Campaign Committee, as well as our committees on Legislative/Public Policy, Organizing, Safety and Occupational Health and Women Workers.
Converso has retired as a leader of the nurses she has served so well and is now retiring as a member of the Executive Council. On behalf of the 11.5 million members of the AFL-CIO, we thank our sister Ann Converso for everything she has achieved for nurses across the country—and we give her our warmest wishes for many happy years of retirement.