Hooray for a true national movement of Registered Nurses! Fighting for patients and justice. I am proud to be a part of it.

I was (still am) on the CNA board when we made the decision to go beyond being just a California Union and become a national union.  It felt scary at the time, but it's amazing to see how far we have come in only 4 years.  Pretty exciting times.  And only going to get better.

I'm so proud to pay my dues in support of the CNA/NNOC vision for health care: A "medicare for all" plan, based on the single-payer model.

What has been described by SEIU and their corporate sponsors, as "raiding and turf battles," minimizes and trivializes the importance of what's really at stake here: Patient Safety!

What RNs need to practice their profession, (as they are educated and licensed to do), is an environment of care that supports, not interferes with their right and duty to be patient advocates.  

SEIU partnership agreements offer no protections for RN patient advocacy, especially when they ban collective action, public exposure, and the right to strike when recalcitrant employers refuse to change circumstances that contribute to poor outcomes. The public has a right to know!

If we care about a democratic labor movement we can't sit back and wait for history to take a step backwards. CNA/NNOC is the progressive RN home for Registered Nurses.

CNA/NNOC = "The Union with a pulse."  Ralph Nader

Thank you lizjacobs.

The details and the news behind the Nurse' movement and the dispute difference in philosophy between SEIU  NNM/CNA has to be more widely shared.

 It isn't simply a turf battle, but a philosophy of what a 21st Century Union is and has to be. Hospitals especially and nursing homes are challenges to unionize and to be safe for the workers and patients in this predatory for profit environment.

 In all industries there is a fight between labor and the owners on basic economic issues.

 Health care has the enormous complication that its mission is seen differetly by the owners of the complexes and the most farsighted vigilant workers, the issue of saving lives as their core priority. Everything is a higher stakes play and the organizing nurses do:

1) can leave them powerless on most things that matter or,
 2) be a spearhead to advance the better care and safety and health of all those in their charge as well as a job with dignity and respect.

 the question is being and will be fought out all over this country. It isn't a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand health centers deciding what letters (SEIU) or (CNA/NNM) goes on the contracts that is important.

It is far larger than that in its impact and importance to the American people. It is part of transforming health care or leaving it more closely shackled to the present cliques and gangs of owners/enterpreneurs and investors to fatten off of for years to come.

Hey, thanks for busting my sister's union in Ohio! Great show of solidarity for workers. I'm sure you guys are working hard to organize the 8,000 workers now that you've denied them their right to form a union. Great job!

Lizjacobs isn't giving the full story behind CNA's so-called "victories":

The overwhelming majority of RNs in Las Vegas didn't buy the false promises that CNA was peddling. Not only was the vote close among the RNs who voted, but the nearly 300 RNs who didn't vote at all clearly were not unhappy with their existing SEIU representation.  Really the only "victory" CNA achieved was to effectively divide the nurses at the worst possible time--when SEIU members are trying to negotiate a new contract to raise standards even higher for nurses and patient care at their hospitals.

CNA's raiding in Las Vegas is just one of their latest attempts to undermine any and all efforts by SEIU to unite nurses. In the last few months, they've mailed decertification cards to union nurses in a large number of states and even sabotaged the union elections for 8,300 nurses and hospital workers in Ohio (which includes adamterando's sister--see above comment).  And it doesn't end there.  In recent years, the CNA has also raided or interfered in SEIU and other unions' organizing drives in Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and other states.

It's a shame that CNA members have had to pay the price (literally and figuratively) for Rose Ann DeMoro's choice to divide RNs.  CNA lured Cook County nurses away from the Illinois Nurses Association based on false promises of California-style wages, benefits, and staffing ratios. Two years later, CNA couldn't deliver a contract any better than the contract RNs would have had with the INA. CNA has had problems in California, too: Sutter nurses in northern California continue to work without a settled contract and Scripps Encinitas nurses voted to remove CNA because they couldn't negotiate real improvements.  

Who are the real winners when CNA declares war on nurses? (See: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/20 08/04/battle-of-the-n.html)

It's certainly not the 85% of RNs who are without a union--and definitely not the patients who depend on them.

On behalf of SEIU,
Karen, RN