Bumped -- GH

The above video is from the California Nurses Association web site. SEIU has a response video posted on their site:

SEIU says:

After more than 3 years of fighting for the freedom to form a union, 8,000 Ohio nurses and healthcare workers saw their dreams derailed by the California Nurses Association.

Less than a week before they were finally set to vote in a democratic election, CNA flooded the state with hostile organizers and bombarded workers with wildly false, and misleading leaflets and phone calls urging them to vote against unionization.

CNA says:

Registered Nurses Beware...
The Service Employees union’s threat to RN patient advocacy and democratic rights

In response to the growing national movement for ratios and greater RN power at the bedside and the public arena, the hospital industry is fighting back. They found a willing ally in the Service Employees International Union. SEIU is a non-RN union — only 2% of their members are RNs — for a reason: registered nurses know SEIU cannot be counted on to protect RN professional practice.

They negotiate deals with employers solely to gain new members, and in exchange they lobby against legislative reforms that would protect patients and accept contracts that weaken RN standards.

(emphases in both the above quotes added by me.)

It's the lead story on each of their front pages, seiu.org and calnurses.org and each has a site that specifically targets the other:

SEUI's:
ShameOnCNA.com

and

CNA's:
ServingEmployersInsteadOfUs.org

SEIU's video was posted on youtube on 4/2... I did a search here and haven't found anything on this. I'm going to skip the "Breaking" just in case this has been diaried and I missed it.

I saw the SEUI site first, the Shame on CNA site, and it sounded like CNA had blocked their attempt to unionize.

I'd guess a group trying to organize in Ohio would have a harder time than one trying to organize in California. Ohio's not a right to work state, yet, ... , but from what I can tell, they are in a place where it still taken seriously. A place where it has a chance to actually come to be and the Right To Work machine is actively angling for it. I couldn't find a California counterpart to the Ohio Right to Work News Page on the National Right to Work Committee site.

I think most people are familiar with Right To Work, anyone who has ever lived/worked in a RTW state knows it is some bad shit. RTW is to labor what the GWB Clear Skies Initiative is to air.

I can see how in a state like that, a group trying to organize would have to make some pretty serious concessions, and I'm sure the SEIU opinion is that it's a start, it's a union where there was none and that's good. And it is good. But in this case it seems that this goes beyond concessions - in this case they are bartering with patient safety.

::

SEIU is national, and obviously much larger than CNA, but SEIU is only 2% RN's. CNA is 100% RN's. That means everything.

This is about patient safety. This is about allocating responsibilities and procedures previously requiring an RN to unlicensed staff. Or worse (and more likely), just assigning these procedures to less skilled staff while leaving responsibilities with a newly-classified-as-"management" RN.

If SEIU is really lobbying against legislation that would strengthen RN standards like nurse-to-patient ratio in exchange for contracts as CNA describes, that is really, really bad.

This is all you need to know about it:

...patients in our hospitals push a call button and wait ... and wait ... for a registered nurse to come to their aid. You could be one of those patients. You might be in severe pain, or frightened or disoriented. You need help, but you wait, sometimes for hours, to receive the care you need. Fortunately, in some cases the wait causes no serious harm. But with some frequency, the lack of a quick response from a nurse can trigger a downturn in a patient's condition, or lead to a serious and costly complication.

...

The cause of the poor staffing conditions in our hospitals is at the center of an intense debate being waged in hospital boardrooms, in the halls of Congress, and on Beacon Hill. Nurses on the frontlines - those who have been working in the system, those who actually answer those call lights, and struggle with increasing patient loads - know why: Patient care has fallen victim to short-sighted financial calculations.