Staff at Kempsey District Hospital marked the start of the new financial year yesterday by wearing red. They joined colleagues from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNWA) in the statewide campaign for fixed nurse-to-patient ratios in rural public hospitals.

The National Labor Relations Board will hold a hearing Sept. 9 on complaints that Sutter Solano Medical Center violated federal law when it imposed higher health care costs on registered nurses and disciplined them in retaliation for their participation in a strike last year. Joseph Frankl, the San Francisco-based regional director of the NLRB, consolidated a series of complaints Wednesday and set the hearing date.

BARSTOW • A U.S. District Judge in Los Angeles issued a federal injunction against Barstow Community Hospital, ordering it to cease and desist its violations of the collective bargaining rights of its registered nurses, according to a news release from the California Nurses Association on Wednesday. Judge Christina Snyder issued the order in response to a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board following charges by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United that Barstow has repeatedly and systematically broken federal law with its refusal to hold contract talks and other abridgments of the RNs’ legal and democratic rights, the release states.