1,000 Nurses to Rally, Lobby for Safer Patient Care on Capitol Hill
Nearly 1,000 members of National Nurses United (NNU) are in Washington, D.C., today and tomorrow, where they are meeting with their lawmakers in support of legislation that combats the nursing shortage and makes patient care safer. They are calling for a more ambitious overhaul of the nation’s health care system.
As part of NNU’s legislative conference, nurses will march and rally on Capitol Hill tomorrow before talking with their representatives and senators.
This morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the nurses that members of Congress need to hear what it’s really like at Ground Zero in health care.
…our elected representatives can hear right from you about what working families need most today. Not from the big-money K Street lobbyists. Not from the Chamber of Commerce mouthpieces. Not from the hospital CEOs or industry suits. Right from heroes like you.
Nurses Union Rallies, Picks DeMoro as Executive Director
Members of National Nurses United (NNU) yesterday wasted no time in raising their voices in support of patients, nurses and working people. Just hours after formally creating the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history, delegates to the NNU’s founding convention rallied outside the Arizona Hospital Association offices in Phoenix.
They served notice they will challenge hospital industry attacks on nurses’ rights and fight to uphold workplace standards. The nurses also pledged to resist corporate cost-cutting measures that reduce patient care and raise nurse-patient ratios. The nurses called for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to enhance the ability of nurses and other working people to form unions.
Nurses Unions Merge to Gain Greater Voice in Health Care
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Delegates to the founding convention of the National Nurses United (NNU) yesterday created the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history and immediately pledged to work to expand union representation of nurses and give them a greater voice in health care reform.
The NNU unites three nurses unions: the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), United American Nurses (UAN) and Massachusetts Nurses Association.
Karen Higgins, an RN from Massachusetts, and one of three newly elected co-presidents of the NNU, said:
The promise of the future has arrived with all the unlimited potential, creativity, vision, and power represented by the delegates in the room, and the 150,000 members of the founding organizations.
