Material presented to Massachusetts Nurses Association annual convention, October 1, 2008.
Addenda: Documents pertaining to founding of National Nurses United, 2009.

In the Beginning was the ANA

• Origins of Collective Bargaining for Nurses
• Tensions Mount
• Dispersal (SNAs shed collective bargaining)

• Connecticut - 1984
• New Jersey - 1985
• Maryland - 1990
• Pennsylvania - 1991
• Kentucky - 2008

Industrial Changes

Hold the Date! LCSP National Strategy Conference August 22-24

Contradictions in US Health Care: Syllabus
Sandy Eaton, RN, Center for Marxist Education, 2014

Session 1. April 14, 2014: Health Care USA: Social Good versus Corporate Wealth

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Briefing Paper, 10 Things Unions Need to Look Out for When Bargaining Under Obamacare, has just been released. The paper examines ten threats to union-negotiated health benefits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It elaborates on the concerns expressed in Resolution 54 passed at this year's AFL-CIO Convention. ... Watch Out

Resolution 54: AFL-CIO Convention Resolution on the Affordable Care Act
Submitted by the Building and Construction Trades Department, the International Union of Operating Engineers and the American Federation of Teachers ...
WHEREAS, in 2009, the AFL-CIO Convention passed two health care resolutions - Health Care Reform Now and the Social Insurance Model for Health Care Reform - which reaffirmed the labor movement’s commitment to health care for all, ultimately through a single-payer system. In 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ... Resolution 54

Resolution 26: Resolution to Develop a Southern Organizing Strategy [Amended]
Submitted by the Savannah (Ga.) Regional Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO - Referred to the Resolutions Committee
WHEREAS, the US labor movement has never successfully developed a concerted and coordinated effort to organize workers in the 11 Southern states making up the Southern Region, allowing the most conservative political forces in the South to operate without effectively being challenged by organized workers; and ... Resolution 26

Nurses File Ballot Initiative for Safe Patient Limits
Sandy Eaton, RN, Labor Notes, September 2013

Up to 98,000 patients die unnecessarily in US hospitals annually, including 2,000 in Massachusetts. Bay State nurses have launched a campaign to end this travesty once and for all through a November 2014 statewide ballot question that would put safe limits on nurses’ patient assignments.

Falls, infections, medical and surgical errors - all result from the transformation of health care into an assembly line. Dozens of scientific studies published in the last decade have shown how many preventable deaths are attributable to one simple fact: patients are forced to share their nurse with too many other patients at one time.

"Since the early days of the First Reconstruction from the mid-1860s through the present day, Labor’s most difficult challenge has been to organize southern workers."
from speech to NAACP 2012 National Convention by Rev. Dr. William Barber, President of North Carolina NAACP

James Haslam & Peg Franzen, Vermont Workers’ Center, June 27, 2012 “The Vermont Workers’ Center is doing exactly the kind of grassroots organizing that needs to happen across America. At a time when the middle class is shrinking and poverty is growing and the very wealthy have never had it so good, we need a movement that demands economic justice for millions of working families. The Vermont Workers’ Center is in the forefront of building that movement and I congratulate them for their fine work.” - US Senator Bernie Sanders ... Vermont

Mark Brenner, Labor Notes, June 27, 2012 The last four years have been enough to turn even the most true-blue union activist just plain blue. We are facing some very uncomfortable arithmetic. Despite 16 million members and $10 billion plus in dues revenue, labor’s reach is dwindling. In most industries - even bastions like auto and construction - we don’t control enough of the market to win decent contracts, so we’re not attractive to new members. Are we at a tipping point, where unions are no longer able to play their historical role of creating a shared working-class common sense? Can we still influence conditions for all? ... Are

Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation, June 25, 2012 Last week, nurses rallied, bank staff marched, conservatives coalesced and finance professionals petitioned - all in support of a global tax on Wall Street speculation. You wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but by week’s end, that elusive goal was closer than ever. “We don’t just advocate for people when they’re ill, and we don’t just advocate for them when they’re in the hospital,” says Jean Ross, a registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United, the country’s largest nursing union. “We have to have a society where they can get well and stay well.” ... The

Steve Early, Labor Notes, June 22, 2012 While the nation waits for an overdue Supreme Court decision that will decide the fate of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, another health care drama with wide implications for universal health care is just starting in Vermont. Prodded by a strong grassroots movement, the Vermont legislature voted last year for a single-payer state health care system where every citizen will eventually be eligible for publicly funded health care. The new system will take five or six years to fund and implement, however, between phasing out existing insurance arrangements, overcoming legal obstacles ... Can

Mike Prokosch, Labor Notes, June 19, 2012 “A hundred million US homes need to be weatherized.” “Tens of thousands of jobs in home weatherization.” In 2009 weatherization was all the buzz. It looked like a triple win: create jobs, save money and energy, and slow global warming. The Obama administration made home weatherization a high priority for stimulus money and the Laborers union set up a program to train new workers to weatherize up to a million homes a year. Three years later, some of those jobs have materialized. ... What

Kathy Robertson, Sacramento Business Journal, June 20, 2012 The president of a large health care union local made an unprecedented move last week to get support for legislation to temporarily relax nurse-to-patient ratios at California hospitals during meal and rest times. Dave Regan, top exec at Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, asked the board of the California Labor Federation in a call Thursday to “go neutral” on a bill if one was proposed. The Labor Fed turned him down 60-2. The two “yes” votes were SEIU members. ... Union