Won’t You Come See Us, Queen Meg?
After spending $90 million to capture the California Republican gubernatorial primary, billionaire and former eBay CEO “Queen” Meg Whitman is now spending some of her cash to attack Golden State nurses and their union, the California Nurses Association (CNA).
But she has refused CNA’s offer to meet face to face and defend her attacks and her Wall Street corporate agenda and its impact on nurses, patient safety and health care. So yesterday, more than 1,000 CNA nurses dressed in red scrubs went to her palace—oops, I mean multimillion-dollar Silicon Valley home. Says Malinda Markowitz, CNA co-president:
Since Meg Whitman refuses to talk directly to nurses, without the filter of her handlers and high-priced consultants, our members are coming to deliver a message to her: RNs and CNA will not be pushed around or bullied like one of her subordinates or subjects. California’s nurses will not accept her high-handed attacks on us, or her plans to reduce public safety protections for California patients, workers and families.
Chicago Nurses Vote to Join National Nurses United
Some 1,300 registered nurses at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) are the newest members of the National Nurses United (NNU). The UCMC nurses voted last night to join the nation’s largest RN union.
The nurses say their top priorities are critical patient safety changes at the medical center, including improved patient staffing and an end to scheduling practices that undermine patient care conditions.
NNU Co-President Jean Ross says the UCMC nurses “have worked very hard to enhance patient care conditions and secure better standards for patients and nurses,” but faced management resistance. Now,
they will be right at home with RNs very much like them across the country, and will have the collective power of nurses from coast to coast behind them. Read the rest of this entry »
Twin Cities Nurses Vote to Strike
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Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera reports on the strike vote by 12,000 Twin City nurses.
Amid chants of “Safe Patient Care,” members of the Minnesota Nurses Association announced they have authorized a strike of Twin Cities hospitals—the largest nursing walkout in U.S. history.
More than 12,000 registered nurses are ready to walk off the job in a one-day strike if a new agreement with six Twin Cities hospital systems can’t be reached before June 1, when the current contract expires, the union said. Nurses had been in talks with 14 Twin Cities hospitals for months, but the union says the hospitals are using the weak economy as an excuse to make cuts that would ultimately hurt patients.
The walkout would affect 14 hospitals in the North Memorial, HealthEast, Allina, Methodist, Children’s and Fairview systems.
Of the 9,000-plus Twin Cities RNs who voted Wednesday, more than 90 percent rejected the labor contracts and pension proposals from the hospitals, the union said. Read the rest of this entry »
Ad: When Nurses Disappear, So Does Patient Safety
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The nation’s crisis in patient care stems from routine understaffing of registered nurses in hospitals—and that understaffing, say nurses unions, leads to thousands of unnecessary patient deaths a year.
In a move to raise public awareness and build support for national safe staffing level standards, the nation’s three major nurses unions have launched a new TV and online advertising campaign. The campaign coincides with the debut of “HawthoRNe,” one of the new TV shows debuting this season that features nurse characters.
The ad from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), United American Nurses (UAN) and Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) asks viewers to imagine a world without nurses.
When nurses disappear, so does patient safety….If you’ve ever been a patient or will be one in the future, insist on safe staffing levels—because it’s our registered nurses who put the care in health care.
