Nurses and healthcare justice advocates kick-off Medicare for All California Bus Tour in San Diego on June 19. What happens if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that “ObamaCare” is unconstitutional? If the Court upholds it, is this the best we can do? ObamaCare, RomneyCare, what about our care? Volunteer to get involved. More »
Sutter is making demands for contract concessions and sweeping cuts in care despite making over $4 billion in profits since 2007, and handing its chief executive Pat Fry at 215 percent pay hike to over $4 million a year, in addition to salaries of over $1 million a year to some 20 other top executives. Join the Sutter RNs on the picket line, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at these locations: More »
California Nurses Association calls it a major encroachment on nurse practitioners’ practice and unsafe expansion of registered nurses’ scope of practice. More »
Genel Morgan, RN and Rita LaBarge, RN - To suggest that nurses who fight to provide safe care every minute of every day are using the death of one of our patients for our own gain is genuinely disturbing. One only has to view the video of the candlelight vigil held honoring Judith Ming to recognize palpable grief in all of our faces as we honored the life of a patient caught in the crosshairs of a system gone awry. More »
An anonymous nurse responds to recent media attacks blaming union nurses for a tragic death at Sutter/Alta Bates-Summit during the five day lockout that followed their one-day strike. More »
"I want to thank you, each one of you, for all the help you gave in the great campaign to make sure that the queen was not crowned, but was exiled, hopefully for a long time," Brown said. More »
In every city and town across America today there is a "Mr. Cellophane," as the musical Chicago put it, and other men, women, and children who seem to have become invisible to those who set policy in Washington and to the financiers on Wall Street who put them in the shadows. More »
An international day of action to make Wall Street Pay - nurses are joining workers to demand jobs, guaranteed healthcare, quality public education, fair housing and enactment of a Financial Transaction Tax (Wall Street sales tax) More »
NNU Executive Director, RoseAnn DeMoro recently called on RNs nationwide to share stories about how the economic crisis is impacting their lives at home, and in their hospitals and communities. Their heartfelt responses were deeply moving, some of which can be read in this blog. To protect their anonymity, names have been removed. Additional stories are coming soon. More »
The past two weeks have been a "Where's Waldo" moment for President Obama. He's been largely a bystander while tens of thousands of American workers, joined by students, and community allies, marched in Madison's snow and freezing temperatures, and slept on the floors of the capitol to defend their most fundamental right to freedom of assembly and a collective voice. More »
By Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director, National Nurses United, AFL-CIO. There should be two lasting lessons to emerge from the heroic labor-led protests in Wisconsin. First, working people--with our many allies, students, seniors, women's organizations, and more--are inspired and ready to fight. Second, we need to send a clear and unequivocal message to the right-wing politicians and those in the media suggesting further concessions from working people. More »
Blue Shield of California today announced a 60-day reprieve in an unconscionable rate hike of up to 59 percent it intends to foist on individuals and families. The announcement coincided with announced plans by nurses, patients, and consumer advocates who stormed Blue Shield's posh California corporate headquarters in downtown San Francisco. More »
Kos readers in California may have been startled to see banner ads today from someone who you can bet does not start out her mornings booting up her computer to read the latest blogs on Kos -- Meg Whitman. In one large ad, Whitman attacks nurses and the California Nurses Association for our challenge to her candidacy -- and our portrayal of her as the arrogant "Queen Meg." The ad links to a website her well-heeled consultants have created attacking CNA and nurses, recycling the greatest hits from the union busting crowd. She also has another ad on Kos attacking Jerry Brown. More »
Here's how things work all too often in our "post-racial" society: one of California's largest medical systems, Sutter Health/CPMC, has apparently enacted a ban on the hiring of Filipino registered nurses at a major San Francisco hospital. More »
Amidst the nation's worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and continuing problems in California with healthcare, education funding, home foreclosures, and lack of jobs, how do you explain the obscene and wasteful spending by candidate Meg Whitman in her campaign to buy the governor's office. More »
If this were a monarchy, Meg Whitman's $1.7 billion Wall Street fortune would make her rich enough to rule. Fortunately, we live in a democracy and candidates like Whitman, the billionare corporate CEO seeking to become Governor of California, remain reliant on the votes of the very people they fleeced. More »
You may have seen the good news out of California this weekend - Queen Meg made Her regal debut before crowds of adoring Californians. Even better, an initiative to formally crown Queen Meg of California was formally filed on Friday by representatives of the California Nurses Association, accompanying Queen Meg herself to the state house. More »
The Meg for Queen of California 2010 campaign debuted last night before adoring subjects, news media, and some of the brightest stars in the Republican and Royalist courts, who had gathered in support of the pretender Meg Whitman for Governor. More »
The 1500 registered nurses and healthcare professionals whose strike at Temple University we told you about recently have been winning support around the country as their effort become a cause celebre in the nursing and labor worlds. The key issue is profound: should Temple or any hospital be able to gag its nurses and stifle their patient advocacy? If healthcare corporations have the ability to silence RNs, every patient will pay the price. More »
Weren't seven years of Arnold Schwarzenegger's dysfunctional tenure in California enough? Schwarzenegger rode into the governor’s office riding the wind not just of his Hollywood fame, but on the bluster that he was an outsider, not just another career politician, that his vast personal wealth made him impervious to "special interests" such as unions (exempting big corporations which always have his help), and that he would fix state government by blowing it up. More »
