Raising the stakes in its effort to win better working conditions for state nurses, the California Nurses Association is sponsoring federal legislation that would ban hospitals from requiring nurses to work overtime.

The association, which is also sponsoring a similar state bill, has taken its first big step into the national legislative arena as key backer of a bill that is drawing opposition from both the state and national hospital industry.

The proposed federal legislation, HR 1289, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit nurses from being forced to work more than eight hours in a day or 80 hours in a 14-day period. Nurses contend that mandatory overtime is a growing trend in response to a nationwide nursing shortage that is jeopardizing patient safety.

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, is a co-sponsor of the bill with Rep. Hilda Solis, D-El Monte, and Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass. Also backing the bill are nursing associations in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania with which the California association has forged an alliance.

The bill has picked up 29 additional co-sponsors, but its fate appears far from certain.

Not only has it drawn expected opposition from the American Hospital Association, but it does not even have the clear support of the American Nurses Association. The California association broke off from the national group in 1995, after concluding the national group did not adequately represent rank-and-file nurses.

“We support the elimination of mandatory overtime,” said Hope Hall, a spokeswoman for the national nurses association. “(But) in reference to the Lantos bill, we don’t oppose it but we don’t necessarily support it. It focuses more on hourly employees and doesn’t address salaried employees.”

The ANA is meeting with other members of Congress about crafting more-comprehensive legislation to address the issue, Hall said.

Opposition from hospitals

The California Healthcare Association, the state hospital industry trade group, opposes both the state and federal bills, saying they are badly conceived solutions to what it acknowledges is a problem.

“We don’t want nurses working when they are tired anymore than anyone else does,” said Jan Emerson, vice president of external affairs for the hospital association. “But the challenge comes from the fact we have a severe nursing shortage, and the fact our patients do not go home at 5 p.m. Overtime is something we view as a last resort, but it is just not possible to avoid sometimes.”

Bill supporters contend that the federal government has a right to limit nurses’ hours just as it limits the hours of truckers and airline pilots and that mandatory overtime is driving nurses out of the profession.

“There is a precedent here for federal involvement in protecting the public by regulating the hours that people in sensitive positions work,” said Michael Mershon, a spokesman for McGovern, who got involved with the bill after a highly publicized strike by nurses last year in his home state.

“Hospitals are not like an airline,” countered Jo Ann Webb of the American Organization of Nurses Executives, a subsidiary of the national hospital association that represents nurses in managerial positions. “You can’t close down a unit just because you don’t have somebody (to staff it).”