National Nurses United

RAD:1 10/19/07 11:56 AM Page 27 launching a fight for safe staffing ratios, and the right of RNs to advocate for their patients. From all of us: Hats off to the Texas RNs! SiCKO michael moore has been a good friend to this organization for a long time. Eleven years ago when we launched the nation's first sweeping ballot measure to crack down on HMO abuses, Michael Moore came to California and campaigned with us for Proposition 216. Michael has since said his experiences with us were the inspiration of SiCKO. And now he has inspired all of us—and the nation as well. It's no accident that Michael chose Sacramento, at our request, for the first U.S. premiere for SiCKO, as an exclusive screening for our nurses and friends. Or that his first public appearance was at a hearing for the California single-payer bill SB 840, and at a rally we sponsored on the steps of the state Capitol. And it's no accident that Michael invited us to join him at every other major premiere that followed. We organized a bus tour that brought the faces and voices of nurses, joined by some of the heroic patients in the film who are here with us today, to the posh premieres in New York, Washington, and Hollywood. And we joined Michael and the patients of SiCKO in testifying before Congress and the California Legislature. And then we achieved something that has never been done. On one magical night in June, CNA/NNOC nurses stood outside theaters in 50 cities across the nation to greet movie audiences on the opening night of SiCKO and talk about what we could do together to fix our healthcare system and end the nightmare so painfully and beautifully chronicled in Michael's film. And the impact? SiCKO is the third-highest grossing documentary of all time. Its success is in so many ways due to your efforts, your creativity, and your commitment. ORGANIZING AND FIRST CONTRACTS we are devoting considerable attention at our convention to our organizing and collective bargaining struggles and victories. But I want to personally welcome the nurses here representing the thousands of new members in the last two years. Citrus Valley, Scripps Encinitas, Tri-City, Sutter Santa Rosa, Sutter Lakeside, Mercy Southwest and Truxton, Doctor's Modesto, OCTOBER 2007 USC University and Norris Cancer Center, Los Gatos Community, Fremont-Rideout. One additional note about the special group of warrior nurses at Fremont-Rideout. They have been in bargaining since December for their first contract. As most of you well know, union busting does not end when the election is over. Despite the fact that state surveys have rated their hospitals as "below average" and "poor," the administration has failed to acknowledge that respecting and valuing their nurses, and negotiating a fair contract, can improve the quality of care, keep the experienced RNs at the bedside, and enhance the reputation of its facilities. Ten days ago, the Fremont-Rideout RNs took a stand for themselves, their families, and their patients and went on strike for better patient care and improved standards. Today we salute their courageous fight. You will have the support of our organization, and together we will win. I would also like to offer recognition for several significant bargaining victories the past two years. Tenet RNs of what they too can achieve. KAISER PERMANENTE SUTTER HEALTH our 14,000 kaiser permanente RNs had the distinction, in the glare of the Kentucky River decision last September, to be the first hospital system where nurses forged contract language assuring the employer would not risk the wrath of an angered nurse movement and try to exploit the ruling endangering their patient advocacy and union rights. Thanks for setting the standard, Kaiser nurses. Your employer learned the hard way long ago to take your demands seriously. one of our biggest fights now is for our 5,000 members at another of California's biggest hospital chains, Sutter. Our CNA/ NNOC and CHEU members have now taken emphatic strike votes at 10 Sutter hospitals. Our members are organizing, and uniting with the communities, including those Sutter wants to abandon, to take a strong stand for patient care and safe staffing. We are going to shake Sutter to its roots. CATHOLIC HEALTHCARE WEST recently, 3,500 rns at Catholic Healthcare West hospitals in Southern California and on the Central Coast approved a new landmark contract agreement that helps raise industry-wide standards for all RNs. A number of CHW nurses celebrated this agreement by rushing from the bargaining table—without any sleep—on a flight to visit their CHW colleagues at a non-union sister hospital in Reno. Those nurses are understandably impressed with what their California colleagues have achieved, and we are going to be bringing the benefits of CNA/NNOC representation to them soon. When nurses stand together in a systemwide master agreement, as we have now for our represented nurses in Tenet, in Kaiser, in the University of California, in 2009 for CHW, and someday soon for Sutter, nurses can alter the course of history, and truly change the face of the nursing profession and patient care. AFL-CIO TENET HEALTHCARE last month, we successfully negotiated the first multi-state organizing agreement in the nation with Tenet Healthcare. What that means is that thousands of nurses in historically non-union hospitals and non-union havens will for the first time have the opportunity to vote on the benefits of CNA/NNOC representation in an atmosphere free of the employer coercion that has come to characterize union elections in the Bush labor board era. Along the way, we also won sweeping improvements for our current Tenet RNs, raising the bar on patient care standards, pay equity, and other improvements that bring our Tenet RNs in line with other members—and provide a powerful example for the non-union W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G two years ago, this body took a historic step. You directed the Board of Directors to initiate a process for an affiliation with the AFL-CIO, the national voice of working people in America. We said at the time that the affiliation should serve to advance the building of a national direct-care RN movement, defend and improve standards for RNs and patients, and build stronger ties with our union colleagues in our collaborative efforts to protect the standards and security of all Americans. And, of course, we said it was a critical stage in the campaign to transform our dysfunctional, broken, immoral healthcare system into one based on patient need. No nation in the world has established a singlepayer or national healthcare system of social REGISTERED NURSE 27

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