America Trusts Nurses
From the AFL-CIO
It’s official: Americans trust union members. For the 17th consecutive year, nurses took home the top honor as the nation’s most trusted profession.
The annual Gallup pollsurveying public opinion on the honesty and ethical standards of various occupations found that 84%—or more than 4 out of 5 Americans—view nurses’ ethics as “high” or “very high.”
Despite growing nationwide efforts to minimize their ability to organize, thousands of nurses voted in the past few years to become union members, including:
- 1,000 registered nurses at St. Joseph’s Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson, Arizona, voted to join National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU).
- 900 registered nurses at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon, voted to join the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA)/AFT Local 5905.
- 650 registered nurses at Methodist Hospital of Southern California voted to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) in November—the largest number of nonunion nurses in Southern California to join a union in at least five years.
- And nearly 600 nurses and medical workers at Tahoe Forest Hospital in Northern California voted to join AFSCME Council 57.
“Nurses are often seen as angels, but members of this women-dominated profession are more like warrior-guardians. We do a comprehensive, science-based assessment of our patients, while also developing a sacred bond of trust, at their most vulnerable moments.”
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