Reply #3: The Kentucky River decisions could take away ALL nurses rights to a union

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/09/chicago-nurses-we%e2%80%99re-not-supervisors/

Organizing & Bargaining

Aug 9

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Nurses to NLRB: We’re Not Supervisors

In Chicago, nurses took to the streets yesterday—literally sitting down in the middle of a busy intersection—to highlight an issue that centers on an obscure government agency with the power to take away the freedom from millions of workers to form unions.

That agency, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), although little-known to the public, interprets the nation’s mire of labor laws.

The NLRB now is deciding a series of cases in which the majority-Republican board could rule that nurses, as well as many other workers, are “supervisors,” a classification that legally would bar them from joining unions and being represented on the job. In fact, in one fell swoop, the NLRB could ban 8 million workers from joining unions.

The American Hospital Association (AHA), the umbrella group for the nation’s hospitals, has urged the NLRB to consider charge nurses as supervisors. At yesterday’s protest, which included the California Nurses Association (CNA), nurses rallied at the AHA building. CNA is the parent organization for the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents nurses in Cook County, Ill.

RNs Working Together, a coalition of unions that includes AFT Healthcare, the United America Nurses (UAN) and Steelworkers, said in a statement:

Nurses will not stand by and allow their union rights go up in smoke. It is imperative that hospitals and the NLRB acknowledge the importance of nurses as patient advocates and continue to recognize their right to union protection. Nurses can’t truly speak up for their patients if they fear jeopardizing their jobs, which is why they need a union behind them.

In July, nurses, media workers, construction workers, miners and other workers held rallies nationwide to demand the NLRB protect workers’ rights and not expand the definition of supervisor in what is collectively known as the “Kentucky River” cases.


And this: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/10/afscme-launches-new-political-health-care-organizing-initiative/

Aug 10

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AFSCME Launches New Political, Health Care, Organizing Initiative

Faced with what AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says is “a newfound audacity from anti-union business leaders and the politicians they bankroll who have become shameless in their attacks on working people,” delegates to the public employee union’s convention yesterday approved a sweeping plan to fight back.

The 3,500 AFSCME delegates at the 1.4 million-member union’s Chicago convention overwhelming said “yes” to a new political action and organizing plan called the 21st Century Initiative.

Key elements of the initiative include:

* Creating a 40,000-member army of volunteers to register 90 percent of AFSCME members to vote and turn out on Election Day and signing up 25 percent of the union’s members to each give $100 or more annually to the union’s PEOPLE political action committee.
* Launching a new national legislative campaign to comprehensively reform the U.S. health care system and make affordable care universal.
* Funding new organizing drives to help more working people join the union and in turn increase power at the bargaining table, at the ballot box and in the corridors of government. The plan commits AFSCME organizers to win representation rights for 70,000 new workers per year.
* Opening a Leadership Institute to train union leaders and activists at every level. The institute will show AFSCME members how to use field skills and online tools to fight for fair contracts, elect pro-worker politicians and beat back efforts to privatize public jobs.

Says McEntee:

In the last six years…our wages are stagnant. Our jobs are being privatized. Our health costs are ballooning. Our pensions are disappearing. Our contracts are getting tougher to negotiate. Our middle class is shrinking. Even our basic rights to join a union and bargain collectively are now being taken away.

AFSCME members took an enormous step in fighting back against the forces aligned against working people. The 21st Century Initiative is how our union will become stronger and hold politicians accountable for this unmitigated assault on our economic security and basic workplace rights.



AFSCME-United Nurses of America is over 60,000 nurses working in unity to advance quality and accountability in the healthcare setting through organizing, political action and nursing practice. Together, United Nurses of America members across the country are winning wage, benefit and other improvements such as prohibitions on mandatory overtime through strong collective bargaining agreements with our employers – and advocating for legislation and policies to increase health care funding, improve quality care, and institute safer working conditions and protections for nurses. Across the country, we are reaching out to other nurses who want to join AFSCME-UNA. As our numbers grow, so does our power to improve our jobs, the care we deliver and the quality of our lives.



Yes I'm a steward and AFSCME proud!