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:

“Thinking about Labor’s Future” is a series which will describe what the labor movement has achieved for America’s working families during the past two decades, and the problems (and opportunities) that will confront the unions of tomorrow. Each week, Harry will do an article on a separate issue. In addition to jobs and unemployment, we will include columns on war and nuclear threats, union organizing, leadership, political activity, healthcare, education, retirement income, technology, the workplace, taxes, global relations and working class culture. Stay tuned.

Here are some headlines you won't see after the government releases new figures on Social Security and Medicare later today: "Social Security Trust Fund Even Larger Than It Was Last Year." "Growing Wealth Inequity Will Lead to Social Security Imbalance Later This Century." "For-Profit Healthcare Poses Threat to Medicare, Federal Deficit, and Overall Economy in Coming Decades." Instead here's what we've already seen: "Aging workforce strains Social Security, Medicare."

California Nurses Association calls it a major encroachment on nurse practitioners’ practice and unsafe expansion of registered nurses’ scope of practice.