National Nurses United

RAD:Sept 10/27/09 10:09 AM Page 9 Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director, CNA/NNOC A Shot in the Arm How our win of a single-payer resolution at the AFL-CIO signifies that healthcare change is coming on a sunny summer day in September 1994, several hundred RNs gathered on the lawn astride Alta Bates Medical Center , one of Northern California' s biggest hospitals , to announce a groundbreaking CNA lawsuit, the first in the nation, to stop a dangerous restructuring scheme to reduce patient services and replace RNs with unlicensed staff. United Mine Workers of America President Richard Trumka, already a longtime friend and advocate for CNA, and a cosponsor of our lawsuit, keynoted the rally. His fiery speech linked the hospital's agenda to other corporate assaults on workers, families, and patients across the nation. Alta Bates' rebuttal? Turning its sprinklers on the nurses. But they couldn't dampen our unity, or our fight, which captured national headlines, inspired other challenges to unsafe hospital r eengineering, and ultimately upended the Alta Bates plan. Fifteen years later, almost to the da y, Trumka was elected president of the AFLCIO, the umbrella federation of 57 unions representing 11 million American workers and the voice of the labor movement. He carried with him the promise of a more outspoken challenge to the economic and political interests that have wreaked so much damage to the living standards and rights of working people in recent years. Trumka also brings to the leadership of the house of labor a special legacy as a long time w arrior, champion, and ally of our organization, our members, and the cause of nurses, patients, and genuine healthcare reform. That's a message well understood in healthcare industry board rooms and legislative offices as well. Our influence was apparent at the AFLCIO convention in Pittsburgh, from unanimous passage, accompanied by passionate speeches from a stream of delegates, of a resolution we sponsored to endorse single payer healthcare reform, to an outpouring in SEPTEMBER 2009 Above: CNA/ NNOC RN leaders marched with filmmaker Michael Moore in Pittsburgh to the U.S. debut of his latest movie at the AFL-CIO convention. Below: Moore discusses healthcare at a press conference. the streets for the U .S. debut, hosted b y CNA/NNOC, of Michael Moore's new film indictment of corporate power in America. Nurses were talking and acting, and labor listened. The AFL-CIO endorsement of singlepayer, for the first time in more than two decades, as the goal of reform (in concert with another healthcare resolution) is a testimony to the great efforts by CNA/NNOC and our allies inside the corridors of the AFL-CIO, and the enormous work by nurses W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G and union activists around the country who have held scores of events and won singlepayer endorsements from more than 500 labor organizations. It's also an implicit r ecognition by the American labor movement that even after a healthcare bill is passed this year, the fight for the most comprehensive reform will continue. That's highly significant for many reasons, perhaps best evidenced by the presence in the hall of scores of international guests (continued on page 10) REGISTERED NURSE 9

• Cover