By Doug Cunningham

In Ohio, Catholic Healthcare Partners has cancelled an SEIU union election in what had been a top-down deal between SEIU and the hospital chain. Jill Furillo of the California Nurses Association says her union has been working directly with the 8,000 nurses at Catholic Healthcare Partners but the nurses had not been working with SEIU to get a union.

[Furillo]: "There was not one nurse that had any knowledge of this deal that SEIU was working with Catholic Healthcare Partners. SEIU believes in these labor-management partnerships, that somehow or other you can be best friends with corporate bosses and somehow that's going to help workers.

By Doug Cunningham

RoseAnn Demoro of the California Nurses Association says now that Pennsylvania's largest RN association has affiliated with CNA, the national nurses movement just got stronger.

[Demoro]: "This movement is actually taken off and growing. And nurses have joined together in 50 states. We're going to use that voice in an activist way. We have a political structure that essentially capitulates far more to the industry and the corporations than it does to the people. And we want to use the voice of nurses across this country in every community to actually be the voice for the patient. And that's what this merger represents."

By Doug Cunningham

The New Year has brought new nurse-patient ratios in California to help insure safe patient care. After years of advocacy by the California Nurses Association, the state’s safe hospital staffing law is on the books and completes its phase-in period in 2008. The law requires minimum nurse to patient staffing levels in several different hospital units in California. It’s a national issue as well, with nurses’ unions around the country advocating that other states adopt minimum nurse-patient ratios for safe and quality care. The CNA says the nurse staffing law is working to save lives, allowing nurses to be strong advocates for patients and is bringing more nurses into the profession in California. The CNA has proposed similar laws in Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, and Arizona.

By Doug Cunningham

Cigna insurance has agreed to pay for the liver transplant for 17 year old Nataline Sarkisyan following a protest by the California Nurses Association and a national web of friends and supporters of Nataline and her family. The giant insurer had denied the life-saving transplant for the comatose teen, but relented after getting a flood of calls from around the country generated by the California Nurses Association protest Thursday. CNA Director Rose Ann Demoro says this is an incredible turnaround generated by a massive outpouring around the country. She said it proves that an enraged public agitating for change can get results. The campaign included a netroots effort launched by blogger Eve Gittlelson on the Daily Kos blog.

Detroit Medical Center nurses like Karen Amato are part of this worldwide fight against corporations that are attacking workers' rights. She will join fellow nurses at a rally in Detroit on this International Human Rights Day to demand their union rights and to stand up for patients.

[Amato]: "Our patients deserve quality care and we deserve a safe work environment. And we want input; we want our voices back. Health care corporations today want to provide care based on dollars, and nurses want to provide care based on the patients’ needs.”

Will the third time be the charm for striking nurses in West Virginia and Kentucky? Thanks to a ruling by a federal appeals court, Appalachian Regional Healthcare will have to pay the picketing nurses more than $3 million in back pay. This is the third ruling saying so, as ARH keeps appealing the decisions. The court said that when the healthcare company cut nurses' hourly wages they broke an older contract. The nearly 700 nurses are members of the United American Nurses and are spending their 12th week on the picket lines while permanent replacement workers do their jobs in the hospital, living in an empty hospital wings. They are striking nine facilities in Kentucky and West Virginia and are seeking a commitment for better patient care from ARH.

By Doug Cunningham

Nurses at Detroit Medical Center are in a union organizing effort as management conducts and anti-union campaign. Registered Nurse Hazel Stewart
says nurses want a voice in staffing and other patient care issues and they want the respect on the job that forming a union will provide.

[Stewart]: "I would like for management to respect our wishes, to stand aside and let us continue with the union organizing and not interfere so that we can get back to what's most important - and that's patient care."

Six hundred nurses at Detroit Medical Center are attempting to join

Nearly 5,000 nurses in Northern California have begun a two-day strike against 15 Hospitals. Kellia Ramares has more from Oakland, California.

By Kellia Ramares

Nurses represented by the California Nurses Association have struck hospitals belonging to the Sutter chain in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are also striking two hospitals belonging to the Freemont Rideout chain in the Sacramento area, where nurses are seeking their first contracts. CNA spokesperson, Chuck Idelson speaking from a picket line, outlined the main issues:

[Idelson] "Make sure the patients get what they need when they need it. There is also concerns about Sutter proposals to reduce healthcare coverage for registered nurses, we’re also concerned about continuing hospital care in underserved communities."

By Doug Cunningham

The California Nurses Association says Senator Hillary Clinton’s health care plan just throws more people under the wheels of the health insurance system without fixing the fundamental problem – an out of control industry profiting off pain and illness with unaffordable health care. Geri Jenkins is on the CNA’s President’s Council.

[Jenkins]: “Hillary Clinton is the number one recipient of health care and pharmaceutical industry dollars of all the members of Congress. So I think that speaks volumes to why the system is the way it is that she's proposing."

Jenkins says the California Nurses Association wants a national single payer universal health care system – essentially an expansion of Medicare covering everyone. A New York Times CBS poll this year found that 64%

The California Nurses Association has decided to take one of their most important issues to Iowa in an attempt to impact the candidates as the try to win the January caucuses.

By Jesse Russell

On the heels of an announcement by the Iowa state AFL-CIO that they support a single payer healthcare plan, the California Nurses Association has launched a series of ads in that state calling on Democratic candidates to do the same. Shum Preston with the National nurses Organizing Committee says that the top tier candidates have proposed “half baked healthcare plans”

[Preston1]: Have the guts to stand up for a healthcare plan instead of just making it look like they are trying to solve the problem.

By Doug Cunningham

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A. Consumer Reports has found that 40 percent of Americans have inadequate health insurance. The Consumer Reports survey found that more than half of the underinsured postponed needed medical care due to its cost and a third had to delve into their savings to pay for medical expenses. One-fourth of Americans have medical debt.

By Doug Cunningham

The U.S. health care industry often claims the U.S. system is the best in the world. One thing they often site is allegedly long wait times for some care in countries that have universal national health care. But the California Nurses Association says A commonwealth Fund study of the U.S. and five industrialized nations that have national health care found U.S. wait times longer than any nation except Canada.

By Doug Cunningham

Single payer health care is the issue that inspired the California Nurses Association to take its 75,000 nurses into the AFL-CIO this week. CNA President Rose Ann Demoro says it was the AFL-CIO’s commitment to establishing a universal national single payer health care plan that cemented her union’s long-considered affiliation with the AFL-CIO rather than with SEIU or Change To Win. SEIU is willing to consider any health care reform that covers the uninsured, but has not endorsed single payer universal coverage.

By Doug Cunningham

The 75,000 member California Nurses Association has joined the AFL-CIO. CNA President Rose Ann Demoro had praise for the AFL-CIO’s new health care policy and says she’s thrilled that the CNA is joining the AFL-CIO. The California nurses association has a national arm called the National Nurses Organizing Committee. It has members in all 50 states. CNA had been considering membership in the AFL-CIO for some time and made the move after the AFL-CIO Executive Council issued a statement supporting universal health care. The CNA supports the House bill introduced by John Conyers that will create a single payer universal national health care system. Demoro says as the CNA joins the AFL-CIO there are opportunities to build a militant, united labor movement essential to the nation’s future.

By Doug Cunningham

The Chicago Federation of Labor, AFSCME and the California Nurses Association rallied on Monday to protest Cook County health care budget cuts that the nurses say will close 16 clinics in Chicago. Two thousand union nurses working for the Cook County Bureau of Health Services say the budget cuts endanger public health, especially the most vulnerable who depend on the county health system. The nurses say senior citizens will suffer from the cuts because 200 long-term care beds will be eliminated. Before the county cuts vital services, the nurses say, county government arou

By Doug Cunningham

Registered nurses from Chicago and across Cook County will hold a candlelight vigil Thursday to protest what union nurses say are devastating cuts in the county health care budget. County commissioners plan to cut health care 17 percent across the board. The National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association represents nurses working for the Cook County Bureau of Health. The union says the big budget cut will cause more deaths and more stress on the county's already strained health care system.

By Jesse Russell

California Nurses Association-represented employers have been put on notice. The union represents more than 30,000 workers, included a majority of registered nurses. Those workers signed a pledge to strike any employer that tries to take advantage of a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that re-categorizes many nurses as supervisors - thereby eliminating their right to collectively bargain. The CNA represents nurses throughout the country.

By Doug Cunningham

Deborah Burger, President of the California Nurses Association, says her union won a deal with Kaiser Permanente that protects 14,000 nurses from potentially having their rights stripped away under a pending NLRB decision.

[Deborah Burger]: “What the agreement did for nurses was secure our bargaining unit by making sure that Kaiser agreed not to challenge any of our registered nurses under the pending NLRB agreement."

The union also won pension improvements and raises of 26.5 percent over the five year contract. Nurses with 30 years or more get another three percent.

By Jesse Russell

Nurses are back on the picket lines in Dubuque. Jesse Russell reports.

Represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 199, nurses at Dubuque's Finley Hospital are taking part in their second strike in two months. The reasons are the same as last time, with employees unhappy with the treatment they are receiving from the hospital in contract negotiations. The hospital has lowered a wage increase from three percent to two percent, a move the union says is borderline union-busting. The nurses have been working under an expired contract since June. They are seeking changes in overtime and discipline rules. To cope with the three-day strike the hospital has brought in replacement workers. Both sides have expressed an interest in sitting back down at the bargaining table, but no negotiations have been scheduled.

By Doug Cunningham

Nurses are marching in Chicago today to protest possible loss of union rights for nurses who may be newly classified as supervisors. The California Nurses Association says the upcoming NLRB decisions could unfairly keep RNs from advocating for patients without the threat of retaliation.