Our membership grew from 15,818 in March 2023 to 18,937 in March 2025. WSNA now represents over 21,000 nurses for collective bargaining — the largest we have ever been.

The WSNA PAC has grown by 800% from May 2023 through March 2025, by increasing the number of recurring donors from 20 in May 2023 to more than 160 in March 2025. We rolled out a program called “PAC Champions” which empowers nurses to engage and educate their colleagues on the importance of PAC donations. We now have 13 PAC Champions and growing.

WSNA and WSHA facilitated three roundtable discussions for co-chairs of hospital staffing committees to learn more about the current state of committees — what is going well, opportunities for improvement, and resources/education to support continued growth. The roundtables, held in February and March 2025, were attended by 50 members. We also published a dozen Info to Go sheets on safe staffing available on our website under Safe Staffing or Nursing Practice.

Safety improvements secured in contract negotiations by our WSNA siblings at Virginia Mason and St. Joseph’s Tacoma will make workplaces safer for tens of thousands of other healthcare workers. CommonSpirit, the parent company of the two hospitals, announced in January 2025 that it will be implementing a visitor management system across all 137 hospitals and making significant steps toward implementing weapons detection systemwide.

Our biennial Union Leadership Conference had record attendance, and we outgrew our usual venue in Lake Chelan. The 2026 Leadership Conference will be held at the Wenatchee Convention Center.

Over the last two years, WSNA-represented nurses secured 26 successor contracts across every part of the state. Those contracts paved the way for better conditions at work, better patient care, and better lives outside of work. Each contract breakthrough helped lay the foundation for the next contract. We also welcomed a new facility, the Mares Campus of Confluence Health, and brought in new groups of nurses at several other WSNA-represented hospitals.

In September 2024, the Labor Executive Council, WSNA’s statewide union-elected governing body, adopted a plan to fully affiliate all WSNA local units with their local Central Labor Councils (CLCs) over the next three years and pay affiliation per capita fees for every local unit. Central Labor Councils are the grassroots of the union movement. Prior to this action, just 18 of 48 WSNA local units were members of their Central Labor Councils. Now, all WSNA local units are members of their CLC, and WSNA union members are eligible to participate in CLC programs and actions.

In November and December 2023, WSNA received widespread local and national news coverage highlighting the staffing crisis on the Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Unit of Seattle Children’s Hospital. WSNA also filed a complaint with the Department of Occupational Safety & Health citing the ongoing pattern of violence and the hospital’s failure to provide a safe working environment. As a result of our complaint, the department cited the hospital. These efforts led to better staffing, more security, and greater awareness of the youth mental health crisis.

In 2023, WSNA adopted a resolution on the Rights of Internationally Educated Nurses that underscored our commitment to fostering an inclusive and equitable working environment for all nurses. WSNA also successfully introduced similar resolutions to the conventions of the Washington State Labor Council and AFT.

In December 2024, WSNA sought justice for internationally educated nurses at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma and won. The new contract language eliminated a longstanding policy at the hospital to credit nurses with prior experience in other countries for only half their experience. The American Nurses Association plans to highlight this story during Nurses Week in May 2025. In February 2025, WSNA secured the same contract language at St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood.

WSNA held a free health equity webinar in November 2024 with Dr. Danica Sumpter, PhD, RN, a nurse educator. The course fulfilled the Washington Board of Nursing's continuing competency requirements for health equity continuing education and is now available as a free online course for members with 1.5 contact hours upon completion of the evaluation and post-test. More than 90 members attended the webinar.