SEIU 's Andy Stern says SEIU will give $250,000 a week to San Francisco strikers. Grace Turner has more on that story.

By Grace Turner

Stern, visited the picket line of striking California Pacific Medical
Care workers to announce major financial support. More than 800 SEIU members at three San Francisco hospitals have been on strike since September 13th.

[Stern1] “This is a pretty fundamental fight about
whether or not we’re going to have a healthcare system
where the first question is, ‘Where does it hurt?’ and

not, ‘Where is your insurance card?’ Whether
healthcare is about patients or profits. Unfortunately
the Sutter Corporation has decided to be the only
healthcare provider in Northern California that
doesn’t want to build a partnership with its workers
and I think that’s rather unfortunate.”

As a first step in fulfilling his promises as leader of labor’s new ‘Change to Win Coalition’ Andrew Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, pledged to give $250,000 per week to help striking Sutter healthcare workers.

[Stern2] “The impetus behind Change to Win is that
American workers in the 21st Century are not having
their work valued and rewarded and we need unions that
have the focus and the resources to be successful. In
California we’ve united the strength of 145,000
healthcare workers at SEIU, so they have the strength
to take on big corporations like Sutter. That was the
purpose of Change to Win, to build these big powerful
unions and that’s what we’re doing here in
California.”