The California Senate late Monday approved a bill intended to reduce a growing number of incidents of workplace violence in hospitals. SB 718 is authored by Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco and sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. The bill next hears to the Assembly Health Committee.

New York - Members of the Class of 2013 of Columbia University, joined by graduating students from other campuses and supporters, will hold a press conference outside the Main Gate to Columbia University on Broadway at W. 116th Street on Tuesday, May 21 at 8 a.m. The students, many of whom are buried in debt from college tuition costs, are calling for a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street transactions to fund education programs that could alleviate student debt now and in the future. Student debt in the U.S. has surpassed consumer debt and now stands at an amount in excess of $1 trillion.

The California Nurses Association (CNA), together with community partners, will host a Robin Hood Fair outside Oakland City Hall on Tuesday, May 21 at 12 noon in support of the Robin Hood Tax, whose goal is to bring a real recovery to Main Street and to end climate change and HIV/AIDS. The Robin Hood Tax is embodied in the Inclusive Prosperity Act, H.R. 1579, reintroduced in Congress last month by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN).

Two Southern California hospitals that are part of one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, are facing major sanctions from the federal government for significant abuses of the democratic rights of their registered nurses. In a scathing decision issued late last week, a federal administrative law judge has asked the federal labor board to order Fallbrook Hospital in northern San Diego County to end illegal evasive tactics and return to contract negotiations with its registered nurses.

California’s Department of Occupational Health and Safety has slapped Sutter corporation’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland with multiple fines totaling $142,970 – including two “willful serious” safety violations at the maximum penalty of $70,000 each for failure to properly isolate patients that threatened to expose other patients, visitors, and staff to major diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). Nurses will discuss the safety violations at a 12:15 rally, at the hospital, 350 Hawthorne, Oakland

Opponents to the closing will present testimony detailing the devastating impact the loss of this service will have on the vulnerable children of greater Taunton. Steward’s decision violates its promise to the community to maintain all services at Morton Hospital, and will mean sick children will be boarded in the busy emergency department or shipped to Boston, Providence or Fall River for care.