By Doug Cunningham

The National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association has made an organizing breakthrough in Texas. Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston has become the first hospital in Texas to have collective bargaining for nurses. This win came in a National Labor Relations Board election, the most difficult method of winnning a union. David Monkawa is with NNOC-Texas.

[Monkawa]: "The anti-union atmosphere in the state and in that region is particularly, I would think, very high. So there was a hostile climate there in general."

Monkawa says organizing Texas and other anti-union states throughout the south, despite the anti-union climate, is an important mission for the labor movement.

[Monkawa 2]: "Unless all of those areas is organized a stable base is built among working people it’s very, very difficult to spread workplace democracy throughout the United States."