1950s: Ground rules for labor negotiations

As nurses were learning how to prepare for atomic warfare, they were also fighting against employers who didn’t want them to unionize. WSNA helped establish ground rules for labor negotiations.

Washington State Journal of Nursing, September 1950

On our cover this month, we give you Miss Joyce Akiko Konno, one of the 115 newly graduated nurses who passed their Washington State Board Examinations for Registration of Professional Nurses in April and who recently received their licenses. We take this occasion to welcome these nurses to the profession and to wish them long and rewarding careers.

Miss Konno is one of the many young women who were attracted to a Washington school of nursing from another state. She hails from Portland, Oregon. It is of interest to note that 12 per cent of the graduates taking their State Board Examinations in April gave out-of-state addresses.

Miss Konno is a graduate of the State College of Washington, Pullman, with a B.S. degree in nursing. In addition, she received her diploma in nursing from St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing, Spokane.

She was selected by her classmates as their representative to give the class graduation address.

Washington State Journal of Nursing, June 1950 (excerpt)
By Mary Ella Adams

The time is now to give consideration to the problem of the care of the poliomyelitis patient.

The problem threatens to be of grave concern this summer, as more cases have been reported in the country as a whole during the first months of this year than over a corresponding period last year.

The WSNA and the district nurses associations are cooperating in every way possible in a program to see that adequate nursing service is provided to every polio patient...

Washington State Journal of Nursing, January 1955

An object lesson in intergroup relations could be obtained from the first graduating class of the Basic Nursing Research Program of the University of Washington School of Nursing, Virginia Mason Division. Four distinct racial groups were represented in the graduating class. Receiving their pins on December 3 were eight classmates; four white, two negro, one Indian and one Chinese.

The graduation ceremonies culminated a twenty-eight-month (three-year) course. The girls, by their own request, lived together in the same dormitory. There was no racial incident and they each worked successfully and pleasantly with their classmates, patients and staff.

The Basic Nursing Research Program is designed to educate qualified nurses in the shortest possible time. The research was made possible by a grant from the National Institute of Health of the Public Health Service. Students enrolled in the program may interrupt their education at the end of their junior university year and take their state board examinations to become registered nurses. They may resume their studies and complete work for their bachelor of science degree.

The recent graduates of the program, who received their pins and three-year nursing certificates, are: Jane B. Knaack, Dulyce Stone, Almetria Williams, Mrs. Reecy Williams Glover and Mabel Wong of Seattle, and Dixie Hagen, Lynden; Carol Edison, Aberdeen, and Thelma Dixie, Blackfoot, Idaho.

Miss Knaack received the Marcella de Young Award for excellence in bedside nursing and Miss Dixie was presented with the Grace Harter Nelson Scholarship. Miss Almetria Williams and Mrs. Reecy Williams Glover are sisters. Miss Williams plans to enlist in the Army Nurse Corps as a second lieutenant. She and her sister will spend an additional year at the University and work for their bachelor’s degree. Mrs. Williams will continue her studies under the Army Nurse Program.

Roy Ecker, administrator of Cowlitz General Hospital, and Gladys Wark, director of nurses, negotiate contract issues with registered nurse representatives. Seated from left: Matilda Young, associate executive secretary of the Washington State Nurses Association; Wark; and Marcella Hatch. Standing from left: Barbara Sathre and Joanna Boatman. Hatch, Sathre and Boatman are registered nurses on the negotiating conference committee. (1957)