National Nurses United

· Defeating, through a series of short-term strikes in 1997 and 1998, an effort by the state's largest healthcare corporation, Kaiser Permanente, to layoff scores of RNs and force the union to accept 26 contract takeaways. · Negotiating "some of the most effective contracts on behalf of nurses" and making CNA "the fastest-growing union in the coun- try," in the words of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. · Building a national nurses movement, first with NNOC, then with NNU, the largest union and professional association of RNs in U.S. history. RoseAnn is "the greatest labor organizer of her time," said Nader to the Chronicle. In 1992, CNA had dwindled to 17,000 members. With union organ- izing drives across California, then the nation, and finally through the founding of NNU, today NNU represents RNs in hundreds of facili- ties across the United States with more than 150,000 members in all 50 states. · Winning unprecedented legislative and regulatory reforms for nurses and patients, including, first and foremost, the nation's, and world's, first minimum nurse-to-patient safe staffing ratios in Cali- fornia. "I remember having 12 to 24 patients on a night shift and what it was like without ratios," says CNA Secretary Cathy Kennedy, RN. "I knew as a med-surg nurse that I wasn't providing safe care. You were able to give quality care because of the ratios." · Reviving the national movement for fundamental healthcare reform to one based on patient need, not corporate greed, via an improved Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. · Leading and joining a host of social change movements, especially confronting environmental pollution and climate change, and proposing a tax on Wall Street speculation to pay for healthcare for all and other needed public programs. "All social problems present at the bedside," RoseAnn would say. Environmentally linked rising cancer and asthma rates, epidemics accelerated by climate change, illness linked to hunger, homeless- ness, joblessness, and poverty, are a few of the social indicators of health. "You can't be a patient advocate today without being a social advocate." She did this all while bringing humor, street theater, and fun into CNA, perhaps best symbolized by a signa- ture campaign against then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004 when he sought to roll back the hard-fought ratio law CNA had sponsored. Urged to accept the rollback by a top Schwarze negger aide, then-CNA legislative director Donna Gerber warned, "you don't know my people." Democratic politicians and many in labor alike insisted Schwarzenegger was too popular to resist. "It's only politically unfeasible if you don't fight for it," RoseAnn says. RoseAnn "took him on when everybody else was terrified of him," Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield told Business Week. CNA flew banners over Schwarzenegger's Super Bowl party and fundraisers reading "It's No Party for Nurses," bird dogged Schwarzenegger across the country, and put him up for auction to the highest corporate bidder on eBay. Bidding reached $3.6 million before the site took it down. A year, and 107 CNA protests later, Schwarzenegger's executive order to reverse the ratios was overturned. Members of other unions, initially fearful of challenging the famous actor governor, joined nurses' protests and defeated four anti-union initia- tives Schwarzenegger introduced. His popu- larity plummeted from near-70 percent to the mid-30s, and his dreams of becoming president were shattered. "What I respect most about RoseAnn is that she'll stop at nothing to fight for nurses and for a better healthcare system in this country, no matter who gets in the way," observed filmmaker Michael Moore, who toured the country with RoseAnn and nurses for the premiere of his single payer advocacy film, SiCKO. "She'll fight anybody: insurance companies, HMOs, Republicans, Democrats. Like a mother bear protecting her cubs from attack, if you try and bully nurses and patients, with RoseAnn DeMoro you've picked a fight with the Mommy Bear," Moore said. Presenting an award to RoseAnn in Los Angeles, actor Warren Beatty, who with actress Annette Benning, joined CNA's battle against Schwarzenegger, called her "a force of nature. When we met, it was immediately clear to me there couldn't be a more ferocious organizer in the United States and let me put it this way, I'm glad I'm on your side." J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 17

• Cover