Steelworkers, California Nurses Launch New Union to Boost Organizing Nationwide http://www.bna.com/
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--The California Nurses Association and the United Steelworkers are launching a new union to organize health care workers across the United States, leaders of the two organizations told BNA March 11. The union will work to organize nurses and other health care workers, mainly in states where the Steelworkers union already has a strong presence, USW President Leo Gerard said. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Illinois, and northern Indiana are likely targets of the organizing efforts. The new organization does not yet have a name, but will be a separate union with links to both CNA and USW, Gerard and CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said. The launch of the new union expands an alliance that CNA and USW formed one year ago, which has provided a structure for them to work together to organize health care workers. Under the alliance, CNA organizes registered nurses and USW organizes ancillary health care and service workers (15 LRW 307, 3/15/01). Few health care workers in the Midwest and steel-producing states are represented by unions, Gerard said. Many of those workers come from families that have worked in the steel industry. "There is not a lot of health organizing going on there," he said. Gerard, in Sacramento to speak to 350 nurses attending a CNA conference, told BNA that USW and CNA signed the addendum to their alliance agreement March 11, signaling the beginning of the launch. In the year that the alliance has been in place, CNA negotiated a contract for 125 nurses at a hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area that gives the nurses retirement benefits under the USW pension trust (15 LRW 924, 8/2/01). CNA will be seeking the same pension benefits in upcoming contract negotiations this year on behalf of 20,000 nurses who work at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Sutter Health, or Catholic Healthcare West, DeMoro said.
