Banker’s ‘Nightmare on Wall Street’
|
|
With a nod to “The Twilight Zone’s” Rod Serling, National Nurses United (NNU) unveiled a new and frightening—if you’re a banker or Wall Street fat cat—video to push for a financial transaction or Robin Hood tax on Wall Street speculation.
In “Nightmare on Wall Street,” a Wall Street executive on his way to work encounters the retirees who have lost their pensions, families foreclosed out their homes, workers who lost their jobs and other victims of Wall Street’s reckless actions that crashed the nation’s economy. They chase him through Manhattan’s concrete canyons yelling, “Tax Wall Street, Not Main Street. Tax the 1 percent!”
The AFL-CIO, NNU and others have called for a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street to raise funds for job creation and to mend the economy that Wall Street broke. Economists say that along with generating jobs, the tax would help reduce the complicated, risky financial practices and products such as derivatives, short-term investment strategies and other speculation that fueled the economy’s crash.
Check out the video and then visit the NNU’s website, www.ProtestIntheUSA.org, to sign a petition to support a robust financial transaction tax on Wall Street, and check out more videos.
Chicago Nurses Overwhelming Vote for NNU
 |
In landslide (94-16) victory Friday, registered nurses at Chicago’s Jackson Park Hospital voted to join National Nurses United (NNU). Says RN Leshaun Williams:
This is a victory for the nurses and the South Side of Chicago. Together we realized unity is the best way to advocate for our patients and preserve respect for the registered nurse.
Safe staffing and respect for the RNs were key issues for 150 nurses. The hospital has been in the news lately for charges of harassment against RNs, and recently settled an employment racial discrimination suit with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission for making African American female workers perform assignments their male counterparts were not required to do. Says RN Patricia Drake:
The election was long overdue and with NNU we will have a voice with collective bargaining to enable RNs to deliver the best quality care possible for our patients.
The election win is one in a recent series in the Chicago area. NNU now represents nearly 4,200 RNs in greater Chicago, including nurses at the nearby University of Chicago Medical Center, where RNs last year won their first NNU contract with significant gains in patient care protections and RN standards.
With Fair Chance, Workers Choose Unions
Writing in Health Leaders Media, John Commins takes a look at the recent successes nurses have had in winning a voice on the job with National Nurses United (NNU) and finds that, once again, when workers are given a fair opportunity to join a union, they do.
Union supporters believe that more U.S. workers would join unions if they could. They don’t, the explanation goes, because these workers haven’t the leverage to bargain with management, especially in a weak economy plagued by high unemployment.
But because of the high demand for skilled nurses, nurses know “they don’t have to tolerate a dysfunctional workplace.”
They can vote with their feet and find a new job elsewhere, or they can vote to organize. NNU’s success suggests that when workers are given the chance to organize, usually they will. That annoys a lot of people who want to believe that unions are no longer needed in this era of enlightened management.
Read more here.
6,000 Bay Area Nurses on One-Day Strike
Concerned over the erosion of quality of care and cuts to patient protections, some 6,000 nurses have been on a one-day strike today at California’s second largest private hospital and at one of its most profitable corporate hospital chains.
The members of National Nurses United include 2,000 RNs at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, and 4,000 RNs who work at nine Bay Area facilities that are part of the Sutter Health corporation.
Michele Ross and Elsa Matos-Leal, both RNs, summed up why they took today’s action:
Despite hundreds of hours of talks, this corporation persists with the
same hard line — pushing more than 150 proposals aimed at the heart of our patient advocacy and eroding safety standards that protect our patients.Sutter, not a mom-and-pop grocery store, hardly needs the sweeping concessions. It has amassed more than $3.7 billion in profits the past six years. It pays salaries of more than $1 million a year to 20 top executives, most of whom received pay increases of more than 100 percent from 2005 to 2009 according to Sutter’s own public IRS filings.
Long Beach RNs say they have gotten no assurances from hospital management for safe RN-to-patient staffing at all times and oppose the hospital’s refusal to implement safe patient lift policies to prevent accidents to patients and injuries to nurses, despite enactment of a state law requiring such policy. Read the rest of this entry »
Nurses Charge Equity Firm with Putting Profits Over Patient Care
 |
On New York City’s Park Avenue today, hundreds of nurses from National Nurses United (NNU) and their supporters rallied outside the offices of Cerberus Capital Management to protest the practices of the multi-billion dollar private equity firm’s health care unit, Steward Health Care System.
Cerberus-Steward operates 10 hospitals in Massachusetts and has partnered with a number of physician practices in New York City. It is entering the health insurance market as well. Cerberus-Steward has come under increasing criticism for cornering the market with predatory practices, undercutting patient care with its push for profits. Says NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN:
As patient advocates on the frontlines, nurses are sounding the alarm about the entrance of cut-throat private equity firms, like Cerberus, into the health care marketplace. It is a development that spells danger for patients and communities across the country. Read the rest of this entry »
Nurses Top Gallup’s Honesty, Ethics Poll
Who do you trust? When it comes to honesty and ethics, most of us trust nurses, according to the annual Gallup poll on how people view various professions. The survey found that 84 percent rate nurses “very high” or “high” on honesty and ethical standards. That’s the 12th time in 13 years nurses have been ranked first.
Karen Higgins, RN, co-president of National Nurses United (NNU), says:
We hold that trust as a sacred bond with our patients and our communities.
At the bottom of the scale, with the most votes in the “very low” or “low” category in honesty and ethics? Lobbyists (62 percent) and members of Congress (64 percent). No shock there.
Click here for the full poll.
Nurses Rally Across the Country in Support of UK Strikers
NNU Communications Director Chuck Idelson sends us this report.
Thousands of nurses from National Nurses United (NNU) along with other union members and allies held rallies in six cities across the country today to support the nearly 2 million British workers striking in the United Kingdom.
U.S. nurses held the actions at British consulates in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando (Fla.), and San Francisco, and at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest the conservative ruling party’s plans to cut public pensions in the United Kingdom.
Corporations in Britain, like the United States, are sitting on massive cash reserves while government officials in both nations push reductions in retirement security and other cuts.
In Washington, D.C., where 200 nurses and their supporters gathered at the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Karen Higgins, an ICU nurse at the Boston Medical Center who is co-president of National Nurses United, said
If people have to keep working with no pensions, it is hurting everyone.
Rajini Raj, RN, agreed:
We’re here in support of the more than 2 million people striking in Great Britain today. We know an injury to one is an injury to all even if there is an ocean between us.
Jos Williams, president of the DC Central Labor Council, summed it up this way:
Today, it is the British workers and tomorrow it is the American workers.
Fla. Nurses Vote NNU, Health Care Workers at VA Choose AFGE
 |
Registered nurses at Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Fla., last night overwhelmingly voted—86 percent—to join National Nurses Organizing Committee-Florida, the state affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU). Earlier this month, AFGE signed up 700 medical professionals at the Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) Edward Hines Jr. Hospital in Hines, Ill.
Key issues for the 500 Palmetto nurses include a stronger voice in patient care protections, improved staffing and strengthened economic and workplace standards for RNs. RN Ailen Leiva called the win “a clear mandate by Palmetto RNs who see an urgent need to improve quality of care.”
Rose Campbell, an intensive care unit RN at Palmetto, says:
I am looking forward to bargaining for improved staffing, which will decrease turnover. We need to recruit and retain experienced RNs in order to provide the safest patient care possible.
Rallies Call for Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
|
Taking the stage in Lafayette Park across from the White House in front of nearly 1,500 union members and Occupy D.C., supporters, a not-quite Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner look-alike vowed “Never, Never, Never” to impose a Robin Hood (or financial speculation) tax on Wall Street.
He then launched into a nearly undecipherable litany of financial jargon, before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who supports such tax, snatched the microphone away and accused Geithner of spouting “Avant garde financial psychobabble.”
The tongue-in-cheek skit was a re-enactment of a real press conference in Cannes with Merkel, Geithner and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also supports a Robin Hood tax. It kicked off the Washington, D.C., rally in support of a financial speculation tax on banks and financial institution to create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. Actions also are scheduled in Los Angeles and San Francisco, too.
Earlier today, nurses from National Nurses United (NNU) held a press conference in Cannes calling for adoption of a Robin Hood tax. The leaders of the world’s top economies—known as the G-20—are meeting there and many of the G-20 leaders support such a tax, but the United States does not.
Yesterday, when a financial speculation tax was introduced in Congress, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who is Cannes for the G-20 meeting and meetings with labor leaders from those nations, said:
“Reckless Wall Street gambling has cost Americans trillions in lost wages, savings and household wealth. It is time to put Wall Street to work rebuilding Main Street with a financial speculation tax to create jobs, rein in speculation and lay the groundwork for long-term economic prosperity.”
At the Washington rally, Karen Higgins, an ICU nurse at the Boston Medical Center, who is co-president of National Nurses United, said a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street:
will put us back on the road to reclaiming Main Street….Its day has arrived.
At G-20 Summit, Union Leaders to Demand ‘Robin Hood’ Tax on Speculators
As world leaders head to France for the the G-20 economic summit in Cannes, labor leaders from around the globe will gather nearby to represent the needs of the world’s workers. Among their demands is a Robin Hood tax on banks and financial institutions that would exact a nano-percentage of each financial transaction to the tune of 0.5 percent. (See video.) That’s one half of 1 percent on every bond or derivative traded, stocks sold and a host of other “financial instruments” bought and sold by the very institutions bailed out by the world’s taxpayers.
Also known as a financial speculations tax, or a financial transactions tax, the idea is catching on in the United States through the activism of unions, especially the National Nurses United (NNU), which has been joining with Occupy protesters to support the Robin Hood tax. The idea has already gained significant momentum across the pond, where British activists are using creative means, such as this video, to sell the public on the Robin Hood tax.
Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), explains it this way:
