Labor Union Blog

Congress this morning extended for two months unemployment insurance (UI) for America’s jobless workers. Republicans in the House earlier this week had blocked the UI extenstion, but after suffering badly in opinion polling, they announced they’d join with 89 out of 100 senators from both political parties who’d already voted to renew unemployment aid for two months—with no cuts and no strings attached.

Media headlines throughout the week–including the conservative Wall Street Journal–and Republican stalwarts such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), had decried House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) refusal to move the UI bill, which gives a lifeline to 2.8 million jobless Americans who otherwise would lose UI after Dec. 31.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described the victory for jobless Americans as “not a hnndout or a free ride” but “a lifeline.”

In the fight to extend aid for the jobless, the 99 percent went on the offense against 1 percent politicians. And we won. And if working people keep it up, we’ll score more victories and build a better future. Not every time—two steps forward, one step back. But look around. People all across the country are saying our economy and our democracy are out of balance. And they’re winning the public debate.

This is the season when many dream of a White Christmas. It is the season when the Nativity and the Menorah are both on display in the marketplace. It is the season when Feliz Navidad plays on many IPods and others gather to celebrate Kwanzaa with family and friends.

This is a season when we see excitement in the eyes of the children—as they make their lists and wait anxiously for Santa to make that magical trip from the North Pole and leave their presents under the tree.

For too many of our children, this season will not be magical or merry—for them or their parents. With 22 percent of children living in poverty; 1.5 million families in foreclosure and another 3.5 million behind in their mortgages, facing foreclosures and with 26 million Americans unemployed or underemployed and desperate to work—this is the season of the Grinch who stole Christmas.

The Grinch, in this case, are the greedy millionaires and billionaires and their bought-and-paid-for politicians who likely will never see their hearts swell from “two sizes too small” to three sizes larger.

No, this Grinch does everything he can to dodge paying is his fair share in taxes. He opposes any policy that strengthens the safety net for the needy, the unemployed, our seniors and our children.

This Grinch doesn’t want this season or the seasons to grow bright for public sector workers, like our teachers, nurses and firefighters. This Grinch wants oices to be silenced in the workplace and in the voting booth. He just hates those who sing Carols of Justice.

Fortunately, there are millions who have stood up and decided that this Grinch representing the 1 percent must be stopped from trying to steal the hopes, dreams and wishes of the 99 percent. From Wisconsin and Ohio to Wall Street and beyond, Carolers of Justice have made their voices and their votes heard.

I don’t know if this will be a White Christmas, but I do know that our New Year will be brighter if we continue to occupy and march for workers’ rights, civil rights, human rights, fight for economic justice, and vote hope and not fear.

Happy Holidays.

Concerned over the erosion of quality of care and cuts to patient protections, some 6,000 nurses have been on a one-day strike today at California’s second largest private hospital and at one of its most profitable corporate hospital chains.

The members of National Nurses United include 2,000 RNs at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, and 4,000 RNs who work at nine Bay Area facilities that are part of the Sutter Health corporation.

Michele Ross and Elsa Matos-Leal, both RNs, summed up why they took today’s action:

Despite hundreds of hours of talks, this corporation persists with the
same hard line — pushing more than 150 proposals aimed at the heart of our patient advocacy and eroding safety standards that protect our patients.

Sutter, not a mom-and-pop grocery store, hardly needs the sweeping concessions. It has amassed more than $3.7 billion in profits the past six years. It pays salaries of more than $1 million a year to 20 top executives, most of whom received pay increases of more than 100 percent from 2005 to 2009 according to Sutter’s own public IRS filings.

Long Beach RNs say they have gotten no assurances from hospital management for safe RN-to-patient staffing at all times and oppose the hospital’s refusal to implement safe patient lift policies to prevent accidents to patients and injuries to nurses, despite enactment of a state law requiring such policy.

The Long Beach nurses also are protesting hospital demands for increases in healthcare premiums. The hospital proposal would cost RNs nearly $3,000 more out of pocket in premium costs, even though the hospital’s costs for nurses’ health coverage has not risen.

At Long Beach, RN leader Margie  Keenan says “We are finding it harder to give the quality care we want to give when our employer, like insurance companies, is only focused on the bottom line.

This undermines our ability to deliver safe patient care.  Our serious safety concerns have not been answered at the bargaining  table and we will not be able to reach an agreement until they are  addressed.  Patients are more important than the bottom line.

Sutter also seeks to limit the RNs’ ability to effectively advocate for patients against
budget-focused priorities of management. The corporate chain effectively forces nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.

Like Long Beach, Sutter seeks to reduce nurses’ healthcare coverage, with huge increases in nurses’ out-of-pocket costs, elimination of health benefits for part-time RNs, and other cuts that would result in thousands of dollars in economic loss for RNs.

Teresa Mullen, a charge nurse at the Oakland campus of Alta Bates Summit, says

Sutter’s proposal to eliminate charge nurses threatens high-quality patient care and our ability to maintain patient safety and patient advocacy.

Says Hebron Viray, oncology RN at Alta Bates’ Berkeley campus:

Sutter’s proposal to eliminate sick leave will force nurses to come to work sick which will further jeopardize our fragile patients.

RNs will also continue protesting Sutter’s slash and burn reductions of patient services throughout Northern California. Sutter has targeted hospitals serving more low income patients in San Francisco and San Leandro for full or partial closures, and carried out huge reductions in patient services it deems less profitable, regardless of the impact on patients, especially mental health services, women’s health care, pediatric care, rehab services and dialysis care.

Here’s the video from the event we reported earlier today by Wisconsin union members, jobless workers and their allies who  called on Republican members of the U.S. House to get back to work and pass the bipartisan Senate compromise that extends unemployment insurance (UI) for long- term jobless workers.

They visited the offices of Reps. Paul Ryan, Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble with some carefully wrapped lumps of coal, and offered up some slightly modified holiday carols.

The events were part of a series of a nationwide actions aimed the 229 Republican House members who voted to kill the UI program the tax cut.