National Nurses United

NewsBriefs:Oct Revise 10/15/08 11:51 PM Page 4 NewsBriefs RNS EXERCISE RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE NATIONAL hio nurses were there. So were registered nurses from Texas, Arizona, Maine, Pennsylvania, and California, of course. In total, nearly 800 CNA/ NNOC RN leaders from 21 states converged in San Francisco from Sept. 25-28 at the 2008 CNA/NNOC Staff Nurse Assembly for four days of education, networking, oldfashioned street activism, patient advocacy, and inspiration. "This was the biggest and best staff nurse assembly yet," said Malinda Markowitz, RN and a member of the CNA/NNOC Council of Presidents. "All the nurses I talked to said they got reenergized and are ready to fight harder than ever for their patients, themselves, and single-payer healthcare for the whole country after they return home." The conference was marked by notable talks from national labor leaders; panels on organizing new facilities and how to resist hospital technologies that usurp, not supplement, nurses' knowledge and judgment; a demonstration in front of California Pacific Medical Center, a Sutter Health facility that is a holdout in contract negotiations; and the highlight: a march supporting guaranteed, single-payer healthcare across the Golden Gate Bridge. O 4 REGISTERED NURSE RNs kicked off the assembly by telling their stories of organizing success. In the past decade, CNA/NNOC has tripled its membership, organizing 87 hospitals. Chris Williams, a newly organized telemetry RN at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston, Texas—the first private-sector hospital in the state to unionize—told the audience of nurses how wonderful his coworkers felt to finally be "independent." "The nurses can choose now," said Williams. "And every contract you've bargained, every election you've won has made what we did possible. We're standing on your shoulders." Other nurses, however, reminded the audience of the forces lined up against unions and the corporate union busting campaigns that continue. Susan Whitfield, an ER nurse at St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, Calif., described the intense union busting campaign at her hospital this year. "We called one union busting consultant 'Jenny Who?' because she would never tell us her last name," said Whitfield. On the heels of Whitfield's story, Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America and a leader in the AFLCIO's campaign to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act, spoke about how workers desperately needed to push passage of that W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G bill because it would allow them to form a union simply by showing that a majority of employees had signed cards. "We're not going to sit back and accept that this is what it takes to organize workers here in the United States," commented Cohen about Whitfield's experience. Nurses also discussed ways to resist the intrusion of skill-and judgment-eroding technology in their workplaces, such as electronic charting, computerized physician order entry, and medication administration systems. Don DeMoro, director of the Institute for Health & Socioeconomic Policy, the research arm of CNA/NNOC, described the philosophical and historical underpinnings of these technologies, and gave the RN audience a taste of trends to come, such as the use of technology to generate "medical credit scores" to determine which patients are most likely to pay or default on their hospital bills. A panel of RNs, Trande Phillips, Lorna Grundeman, and DeAnn McEwen, then shared stories of problems caused by technology at their facilities and introduced the nurses to CNA/NNOC's new technology despite objection, or TDO, campaign. Nurses can now fill out TDOs when forced to use technology systems that interfere with their ability to take care of their patients. Much like the assignment despite objection, or ADO, form used to OCTOBER 2008

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