How much does it really cost to run an employee representative association like the NPAQ or the QNMU?  It depends whether your goal is to just look after your members or whether you have an additional goal.

We recently reviewed the QNMU Annual Report and it makes interesting reading when compared to what the NPAQ is able to successfully do for its members.

Let us quickly compare:

Provided you don’t do party political campaigns and just concentrate on providing nurse member services, NPAQ have established after 5 years that $250 per member per year is sufficient to do this.

The QNMU, which had a monopoly until we came along, use $465 for every member to provide the same service. They collect $510 for each member and also make a small profit.

To be clear, we absolutely defend their right to do what they do with their members’ money. Their constitution and the existing laws allow them to support party political projects. Good on them. We do not want to change that. It is just that we don’t want to do that. As long as nurses have a choice, common sense will decide on the cream that rises to the top.