A Tribute to the Nurses of Our Nation
Before more than 1,000 registered nurses and their supporters hit the halls of Congress last week to lobby lawmakers on key nursing and health care reform legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney took time out to praise and encourage the sponsors of the event: the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), United American Nurses (UAN), Massachusetts Nurses Association, Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, New York State Nurses Association and the SEIU Nurse Alliance.
The nurses had traveled from all around the nation to take part in the National RN Day of Action as part of National Nurses Week. We thought we’d share some of Sweeney’s remarks as a reminder to all of us of the great work nurses do—work that sometimes too many of us take for granted—and as a way to highlight the need for safe working conditions so nurses can continue to give their patients the best care possible.
Thanks to all of you for what you do every day for all of our families—what a terrific gathering, what a great tribute to the nurses of our nation to have you here in Washington during National Nurses Week.
VA Nurses: One Step Closer to Restored Bargaining Rights
Katrina Blomdahl, writer-researcher for RNs Working Together, says the organization applauds moves to return bargaining rights to Veterans Affairs nurses. RNs Working Together is a coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions representing more than 200,000 registered nurses nationally.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, reached out to right a serious wrong when they recently introduced crucial legislation (S. 362 and H.R. 949) to restore the collective bargaining rights of VA health care professionals, including registered nurses.
For the past several years, health care professionals have been scrambling to meet soaring patient care demands from two wars and an aging population. Meanwhile, the professionals who provide the hands-on care to our veterans have seen their ability to have an effective voice in the workplace eroded by the Bush administration, intensifying the shortage in VA hospitals. The legislation sponsored by Rockefeller and Filner aims to reverse that trend.
N.J. Supreme Court: Striking Nurses Entitled to Unemployment Benefits
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This post brought to us by Katrina Blomdahl, writer-researcher for RNs Working Together, which is a coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions, representing more than 250,000 nurses nationwide.
Sometimes justice comes in ways you least expect it.
That’s the case for nearly 100 nurses from Willingboro, N.J., represented by JNESO. Two weeks ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that striking nurses at Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, a 259-bed nonprofit hospital, were entitled to unemployment benefits for the time they spent on picket lines.
(JNESO, which refers to the Union Division of the State Nurses Association, began in 1958 as the Jersey Nurses Economic Security Organization and now is affiliated with the Operating Engineers union.)
The strike started in 2004 and lasted for two years. The workers who filed for unemployment at the beginning of the strike in 2004 were ruled to be eligible for 26 weeks of benefits. New Jersey law allows striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, provided they do not cause their employer to suffer a “stoppage of work.”
