National Nurses United

SEIU:FINAL 7/3/08 1:19 PM Page 11 lation limiting patients' right to sue over care abuses, to oppose reforms to require better staffing for patient safety, and to never report health care code violations. Silencing opposition to Stern's corporate agenda while conventions are typically a time to debate and discuss critical issues, the Stern administration silenced internal opposition to his agenda of agreements with corporations that compromise patients and undermine members' rights and power. First, Stern and his associates stacked delegates to the convention. Internal SEIU e-mails revealed SEIU officials subverted local delegate elections, possibly in violation of union rules and federal law, to block the election of union reformers to the national convention. The convention was dominated by delegates from Stern's reorganized SEIU, composed of merged mega-locals now headed by appointed loyalists. RNs were a primary victim. Local 721, which includes Los Angeles County RNs, the second-largest SEIU contract for RNs in the U.S., elected hundreds of delegates to the upcoming national convention. But not even one RN was selected to attend. Stern's handpicked delegates then voted down proposals by the few reformers who got through the doors to challenge agreements such as the nursing home pact and similar employer-friendly pacts. Notably, opposition to the reforms came from staff, not members. All the speakers recognized to speak in support of Stern's positions were ex-staff now running the newly merged locals. Rejecting single-payer healthcare reform lastly, the seiu convention rejected a resolution supporting single-payer, as in an expanded and improved Medicare-for-all style, healthcare reform. Stern denounced single-payer as "the CNA" reform, and led chants against it. The appalling behavior at the convention coincides with SEIU mailers to RNs denouncing CNA/NNOC for "developing proposals" such as "government-run healthcare." With that language, SEIU has embraced almost word for word the attack used by Sen. John McCain against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (whose own plan falls short of single-payer). The rhetoric also demeans and disrespects the care delivered by SEIU members who work in public facilities, a further sense of how SEIU has degraded the value and work of its own members. Instead, Stern has formed coalitions with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest insurance companies, and big corporate chains to undermine genuine reform and provide them political cover for proposals to reinforce and protect the failed insurance-based system. Stern's constant refrain is to proclaim the death of employer-provided health coverage, which—even with the cutbacks and takeaways sought by so many employers—still is the main source of health coverage for the majority of RNs and other American workers. Stern's rhetoric is music to the ears of the corporate chains he seeks to give him and SEIU sweetheart deals. By opposing singlepayer, the only genuine alternative to employer coverage, Stern is providing a blueprint for sharply cutting employers' responsibilities and costs—and shifting the burden, cost, and risk to employees. From coast to coast, RNs who are current SEIU members have heard and seen enough of Stern's collusion with employers, sacrifice of patient standards, abandonment of representation, and autocratic behavior towards its own members. And they are looking to get out. I JUNE 2008 RN Alert SEIU's New Attack on Ratios The Service Employees International Union is opening up a new front in its long campaign to oppose and then weaken California's historic RN staffing ratio law, which CNA/NNOC sponsored and fought to defend. SEIU staff are badgering CNA/NNOC members at home, pushing them to collaborate in a "survey" on staffing ratios with UCSF researchers. UCSF has repeatedly issued studies and reports that have sought to undermine ratios, most recently in a report by the California Nursing Outcomes Coalition (CalNOC), funded by nurse executives. In a critique of the CalNOC report, CNA/NNOC's Nursing Practice department found that the UCSF research is "a desperate, non-scholarly, unscientific ploy to fabricate and manipulate evidence to support a preconceived, highly prejudicial, and suspect conclusion that the California ratios do not contribute to in-hospital patient safety." Like the CalNOC report which SEIU favorably cites in its handouts, the SEIU survey uses defective methodology and dubious questions that can provide no meaningful information about the success of the ratios. The real purpose of the survey is to create the false impression of SEIU support for a law which it opposed and sought to undermine, collect personal information from CNA/NNOC members, and assist SEIU's hospital partners in their drive to deskill and devalue the RN profession. SEIU, an anti-ratio union, has a long history of opposing ratios and working behind the scenes with hospital management to remove ratios so that RNs can be replaced with ancillary staff—members from which SEIU can collect more dues. California. SEIU joined with the hospital industry to lobby against AB 394, the ratio law. In Department of Health Services hearings on implementation of the law, SEIU fought to have LVNs included in the ratio count. SEIU worked behind the scenes to defeat a bill to toughen penalties against hospitals that willfully violate the ratio law. Florida. SEIU abandoned the fight for an RN ratio bill in April—taking a back seat when a state Senate committee voted instead to permit hospitals to only report staffing levels up to 48 hours after receiving a written request for information. Massachusetts. SEIU has not endorsed pending legislation to set safe staffing ratios for nurses. Other states and RN contracts. SEIU proposes employerfriendly unenforceable "voluntary" staffing guidelines What you can do if SEIU knocks on your door: Insist on seeing some identification. Write down their names. If you are harassed, call the police. If SEIU reps try to recruit you for its anti-ratio survey, tell them you support CNA/NNOC's ratios and will not help an anti-ratio union, SEIU. Tell your CNA/NNOC representative about the visit. Learn more at www.servingemployersinsteadofus.org, and request an SEIU "Go Away" door hanger. W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G REGISTERED NURSE 11

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