California Nurses Association Joins AFL-CIO

The AFL-CIO voted to grant a charter to the California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, March 9, uniting 325,000 registered nurses into the leading voice of America’s working people. CNA/NNOC represents 75,000 RNs in all 50 states.

Significantly, the decision came two days after the Federation adopted a sweeping new healthcare policy statement endorsing a single-payer type system premised on “updating and expanding Medicare benefits” to all Americans.

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of CNA/NNOC, said it was thrilled to be joining the AFL-CIO and also praised the Federation’s new healthcare policy.

“We look forward to being a part of a Federation that has distinguished itself as the national voice of working people in the U.S., and is the leading national champion for all Americans on a broad range of critical issues, including jobs, retirement security, economic opportunity, workplace safety, civil rights, civil liberties, and public safety,” DeMoro said.

In September 2005, CNA delegates voted overwhelmingly to apply for an AFL-CIO charter.

The CNA and AFL-CIO Labor Councils in California have worked closely over the last two years, most significantly in defeating Gov. Schwarzenegger’s the anti-labor initiatives in the 2005 special election.

San Mateo County Central Labor Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Shelley Kessler welcomed the affiliation of the CNA. “Many of our health care workers who are members of AFSCME or SEIU work side by side with members of the CNA. The more united we are, the stronger we will be—and our health care system will be better,” she said.

“We are happy to have the California Nurses Association as a partner to help strengthen our movement and advance universal health care,” Kessler added.

California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski also welcomed the CNA’s affiliation.

“It’s a strong union in the state, an advocate for improved health care,” he said. “We consider them a great addition to the movement.’’

The AFL-CIO’s executive council endorsed a single-payer system at its meeting in Las Vegas, adding that it supports “updating and expanding Medicare benefits’’ to all Americans.

The AFL-CIO’s new policy statement on healthcare symbolizes the organization’s leadership role, CNA’s DeMoro said. CNA has been actively campaigning for enactment of bills in Congress, HR 676, and California, SB 840, that represent the type of reform endorsed by the AFL-CIO.

In statements after the policy was adopted, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, chair of the AFL-CIO’s Legislation Committee, welcomed the new policy as “a roadmap to universal coverage” and the Federation’s health policy specialist Gerald Shea specifically cited HR 676.

Labor has been at the center of a growing grassroots movement to enact HR 676. The bill has been endorsed by 245 union organizations in 40 states including 64 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 17 state AFL-CIOs. The San Mateo County Central Labor Council endorsed HR 676 at its February delegates’ meeting.

CNA/NNOC, DeMoro noted, “is especially pleased to be a part of the 325,000 RNs now represented by the AFL-CIO who will have such a prominent voice in that effort.” RNs, she said “who are at the heart of our healthcare system, have an especially unique role to play with all of labor and our many community allies to transform our current dysfunctional system to achieve guaranteed, universal healthcare for all, based on an improved and expanded Medicare.”

In addition to building “a stronger movement to end the nation’s national healthcare nightmare,” DeMoro praised other positions taken by the AFL-CIO, including mobilizations to:

• Enact the Employee Free Choice Act, recently passed by the House, to protect the democratic rights of workers to form unions

• Support the United Steelworkers’ Goodyear workers in their efforts to protect the health and welfare of their members

• Protect public health and defend public healthcare workers, as in the current fight by AFSCME and CNA/NNOC to overturn budget cuts in Chicago

• Overturn the attempt by the Bush Administration to privatize Social Security

• Confront moves by the Bush Administration’s National Labor Relations Board to erode workers’ rights, as in the “Kentucky River” challenge to the union representation rights of registered nurses

• Challenge globalization and the de-industrialization of America

• Defeat some of the most reactionary members of Congress and state legislators in the 2006 elections

“CNA/NNOC is excited to be joining the AFL-CIO and all appropriate bodies of the federation at this critical juncture, and the opportunities we have to build a militant, united labor movement that is so essential to the future of our nation and the international labor movement,” DeMoro said