Republican Meg Whitman wants to eliminate the capital gains tax in California if she is elected governor in November, a key part of her plan to boost state employment. Her sales pitch: Cutting taxes for the wealthy will encourage them to create private-sector jobs. —Associated Press, 07/28/10 More »
Hospital leaders attending the American Hospital Association's Leadership Summit in San Diego Thursday got a stern lecture from Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who advised them they should adopt the safety culture of the aviation industry. They must stop thinking of accidents “as inevitable and start thinking about them as unimaginable," he said. “We in aviation have learned a lot, and we’re anxious to share it with you.” —HealthLeaders Media, 07/23/10 More »
State Orders Hospital to Cease Charging Nurses for Parking and to Reimburse all Parking Fees Paid Since 2008. Ruling Follows a Recent Labor Division Complaint Against CHA for Violating the Rights of Cambridge Hospital Nurses for Once Again Failing to Negotiate and Unilaterally Slashing Benefits —Massachusetts Nurses Association, 07/22/10 More »
This past April, Rose Ann DeMoro—a former supermarket cashier from St. Louis—looked at billionaire California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and had an idea. DeMoro found a Los Angeles drama teacher, dressed her in a crown and faux ermine, and sent her out to tail Whitman across the state. Joined by tuxedoed bodyguards named "Goldman" and "Sachs," "Queen Meg" now spends her days taunting Whitman up close. "The new corporate aristocracy, they're used to unilateral control, no democracy," says DeMoro. "The script just wrote itself." —Business Week, 07/22/10 More »
The registered nurses of the North Adams Regional Hospital (NARH) voted overwhelmingly yesterday to authorize their union leadership to call a strike if necessary in their ongoing negotiations with hospital management. In a unified show of strength -99 percent of the voting members voted in favor of the strike authorization. —Massachusetts Nurses Association, 07/20/10 More »
In her gubernatorial campaign, California billionaire Meg Whitman fancies herself a turnaround artist, not unlike CEOs who take on failing companies and put them in the black. In her analysis of why the nation's most populous state and the world's 12th largest economy has a chronically dysfunctional government, one villain stands out: public-employee unions. —Time, 07/20/10 More »
Leaders of the Michigan Nurses Association (MNA) and its national union, National Nurses United (NNU), expressed their appreciation today to Interfaith Worker Justice for its new report, "Ascension Health: A Fall from Grace." (The report can be found online at www.iwj.org.) —Michigan Nurses Association, 07/16/10 More »
Hundreds of unionized nurses wearing scrubs held a raucous rally Thursday outside the Silicon Valley home of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to protest her proposals for the state, which they say will hurt working people. Dozens of police officers descended on the leafy streets surrounding Whitman's two-story colonial home in Atherton. An estimated 1,100 protesters chanted "We're going to beat back the Whitman attack" as an airplane paid for by the nurses union circled overhead, trailing a banner that read, "Nurses say no to Whitman." —Associated Press, 07/15/10 More »
Atherton police are bracing for the town's quiet streets to be flooded today with hundreds of nurses for a rally outside the home of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. The California Nurses Association says the noontime rally — which is expected to draw up to 1,000 nurses to the former eBay executive's house on Edge Road near Menlo-Atherton High School — is a "response to a decision by candidate Whitman to mount an offensive attack directly against the" union. —San Jose Mercury News, 07/15/10 More »
Here’s another thing we don’t understand: Why Meg Whitman keeps picking fights with the California Nurses’ Association. Having already erected a new web site exclusively dedicated to brawling with the nurses’ union, and sent a personal letter to every member of the CNA, Her Megness announced yesterday that she is “forming an advisory board of nurses to advise her on issues during the campaign.” —Calbuzz, 07/14/10 More »
In a victory for registered nurses at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, an independent arbitrator has ruled that the hospital violated the nurses’ union contract last January when it froze the Defined Benefit Pension Plan. The arbitrator has ordered the hospital to promptly unfreeze the defined benefit pension plan for the nurses, restore the contribution to the plan retroactive to the date on which the Hospital froze the plan, and to continue to fund the plan going forward. —Massachusetts Nurses Association, 07/14/10 More »
The State Labor Relations Commission (SLRC) today issued a formal complaint against Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), citing the organization for bargaining in bad faith and depriving nurses of their union rights following CHA’s decision to prematurely cease negotiations, declare impasse and unilaterally slash nurses’ retiree health benefits. The SLRC will be scheduling hearings on the complaint issued against CHA. —Massachusetts Nurses Association, 07/13/10 More »
America's nurses are on the march — literally and figuratively. Consider just two recent developments: In Minnesota, 12,000 nurses from 14 hospitals walked off the job for a day last month, the largest such action in U.S. history, in a bid to improve staffing levels and to secure standardized nurse-patient ratios. In Texas, almost 2,000 nurses at five hospitals voted to form unions in a two-week period ending in June. This was particularly notable because Texas has the third largest number of RNs in the country — after California and New York — but previously only one private hospital in Texas was organized. —Washington Times, 07/12/10 More »
Rose Ann DeMoro, a former supermarket cashier from the suburbs of St. Louis who has risen to become one of America’s most powerful labor leaders, recalls that her tough but saintly mother had two maxims. One: “Keep reaching.” Two: “If someone hits you, and you don’t hit ’em back, you’re going to get it when you get home.” DeMoro, executive director of the 86,000 member California Nurses Association and the 155,000-member National Nurses United, says she has faithfully lived by the first — and never had to worry much about the second. —San Francisco Chronicle, 07/11/10 More »
The California Nurses Association has taken on powerful people before, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators from both major parties, and has scored resounding wins. In each showdown, the 86,000-person union made full use of its key advantage – the appeal of its members' professions – while pressing hard for policies that benefited nurses. —Sacramento Bee, 07/04/10 More »
The nurses group wants Brown as the next governor, but Whitman is reaching out directly to individual nurses. Meg Whitman is trying her hand at a manner of union busting – and her degree of success will help determine whether she's elected governor in November. —Orange County Register, 07/02/10 More »
With campaigning disappearing and becoming irrelevant as we head into the 4th of July weekend, something remarkable has taken place in the race to replace term-limited Arnold Schwarzenegger as California's governor. We're now essentially one-fifth of the way through the general election. Billionaire Republican wannabe governor Meg Whitman has spent a record-shattering $100 million. Jerry Brown has spent virtually nothing. Yet Whitman's campaign has failed to change anything in the overall dynamic of the race. —Huffington Post, 07/01/10 More »
The Assembly Health Committee today approved the California Universal Health Care Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). The bill guarantees all Californians comprehensive, universal health care while containing ballooning health care costs and improving the quality of care and delivery of health services statewide. —California Chronicle, 06/30/10 More »
The findings, researchers say, raise the possibility that the so-called "pay-for-performance" initiative could inadvertently worsen existing healthcare disparities. Pay-for-performance reimbursement plans essentially reward hospitals and doctors for meeting certain treatment goals established in medical guidelines. For example, guidelines state that heart attack patients should be given aspirin and drugs called beta-blockers when they are admitted to and discharged from the hospital; centers that better meet that goal would get greater reimbursements. —Reuters, 06/29/10 More »
The California Nurses Association said the incident shows how disconnected the GOP gubernatorial nominee is from working people. At a news conference outside its Oakland headquarters that was attended by 150 nurses in red scrubs, the union unveiled a new ad campaign - "Nurses Won't Be Pushed Around" - and released posters showing a heavily jeweled hand adorned with rings that was meant to represent the billionaire candidate. —San Francisco Chronicle, 06/25/10 More »
