Nurses Welcome Decision on Gay Rights, But Condemn Court’s Attack on Voting and Workplace Rights
National Nurses United, the nation’s largest organization of nurses, welcomed Supreme Court rulings today moving the ball forward on the rights of same sex couples to marry while condemning earlier decisions this week that it said severely undermine democratic rights in the voting booth and in the workplace.
Global Nurses United
Jun 26, 2013
Federal Court Sanctions Barstow Hospital for FailingÂÂ to Bargain With RNs...
A U.S. District Judge in Los Angeles Monday issued a federal injunction against Barstow Hospital, ordering it to cease and desist its flagrant violations of the collective bargaining rights of its registered nurses. 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 abridgements of the RNs’ legal and democratic rights.
California Nurses Association/NNU
Jun 26, 2013
Global Nurses United of Nurse, Healthcare Worker Unions, Born
SAN FRANCISCO – Leaders of the premiere nurses and health care workers unions in 14 nations in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe have announced plans to form a new international organization to step up the fight against the harmful effects of austerity measures, privatization, and cuts in health care services that they say are putting people and communities at risk across the planet. Calling the new formation Global Nurses United, leaders of the initial endorsing countries said they would also work collectively to guarantee the highest standards of universal healthcare as a human right for all, to secure safe patient care, especially with safe nurse-to-patient ratios, and safe health care workplaces.
Global Nurses United
Jun 26, 2013
Government Imposes $4 Million Fine on Kaiser for Limiting Patients’ Access to Mental Health Care
$4 Million Fine is Second Largest in DMHC’s History; Action Results from Caregivers’ Complaint to the Agency 

Today, the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) announced a $4 million fine against California’s largest HMO for limiting patients’ access to mental health care. The fine affirms the findings of an exhaustive complaint filed by Kaiser Permanente’s frontline mental health clinicians, who are represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). In November of 2011, NUHW filed a 34-page complaint with the DMHC and has cooperated with the agency’s ensuing 19-month investigation.
Jun 25, 2013
Nurses Call on President Obama to Take the Next Step on Climate Change and Fully Reject Keystone XL
The nation’s largest organization of nurses welcomed the call by President Obama today for action on climate change. But the President’s statement on the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline that “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of climate change,†does not go far enough, says National Nurses United.
National Nurses United
Jun 25, 2013
Canadians Pay Taxes for Universal Health Care, and Now They're Richer Than Us
Many conservatives still characterize Medicaid as “welfare,†and many think of it as such. Presumably other types of health care coverage have been “earned†(think veterans and the military, highly paid executives, union members and congressional staff). We resent our tax dollars going to “freeloaders.†Until the slicing and dicing is ended, the finger pointing, blame shifting and their attendant political wars will continue.
Portside.org
Nobel Laureates Call on President Obama and Secretary Kerry to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline
When 10 Nobel Laureates call on President Obama to reject once and for all the Keystone XL oil pipeline, perhaps it's time he do that. Ten recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize have written to President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry urging the rejection of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline. The Laureates, many of whom urged the President to reject the pipeline in 2011, believe that now is the time for leadership by the United States on climate change. The rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is a critical step in limiting the expansion of the Canadian oil sands - Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas pollution. The oil sands also have devastating impacts on local land, water, air, and communities.
Portside
There Is No Other Planet We Can Go To
With the magnificent expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge as backdrop and pathway, nurses from across the U.S. rallied on Thursday to call an end to the Keystone XL Pipeline project, a ghastly effort to transport poisonous tar sands 1,700 miles from Canada to Texas, exposing hundreds of communities en route to calamitous spills, ruined water systems and deleterious health effects. Nurses also called for an end to the politics of austerity, one that puts the false choices – jobs through environmental degradation – before us. “Nothing related to Keystone XL is good for our families, our communities, or our planet,†announced Debra Burger, RN and NNU co-president from the rally stage. “From extraction to transport to refining, tar sands oil will exacerbate our current health emergency…. This is a clear and present danger to public health.â€
National Nurses United
Lack of courage, conviction from Republican Senators shameful for Michigan’s needy
LANSING – Members of the Michigan Nurses Association are livid that over 400,000 of Michigan’s neediest citizens, the majority of which are women and children, will be left without access to health care as a result of the Senate’s refusal to pass the Medicaid expansion program offered as part of the federal Affordable Care Act. “This is callous, heartless behavior,†said Jeff Breslin, RN, MNA president. “From the start of the discussions in the Senate, it’s been shown over and over that money and personal ambitions are clearly taking precedent over a healthier Michigan. When vacations and re-election campaigns and coercion from well-moneyed special interests are controlling how our elected legislators represent the people that voted them into office, it’s a bleak future for our state.â€
Jun 20, 2013
Hundreds of protesters make their way across the Golden Gate Bridge on Thursday
SAN FRANCISCO -- Calling a proposed oil pipeline across the nation's midsection a threat to public health in California, more than 1,000 nurses streamed across the Golden Gate Bridge on Thursday to urge that President Obama block its construction. It might not have seemed like an obvious target for nurses who had gathered for a convention in San Francisco, but the protesters - clad in red scrubs - said the connection between health problems and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was real. The proposed 1,700-mile-long pipeline, which would carry oil from the tar sands oil fields in Canada to refineries in Texas, is a public health risk to all, even those a thousand miles away in San Francisco, said members of the group National Nurses United.
San Francisco Chronicle