On the picket line

Twins Cities nurses vote to strike

Amid chants of “Safe patient care!” 90 percent of Twin Cities nurses voting May 19 rejected the contract offered by 14 hospitals. The nurses say the hospitals are using the economy as an excuse to make cuts that would hurt patients. If a new contract cannot be negotiated by June 1, the 12,000-plus members of the Minnesota Nurses Association, which is part of National Nurses United, will strike. The nurses elected to go out for one day to show, according to MNA President Linda Hamilton, they were “serious about standing up for patient safety” while minimizing “the impact on our patients.” If forced to strike, it would be the largest nursing walkout in U.S. history. The largest previous nursing strike also occurred in Minnesota in 1984 when more than 6,000 Twins Cities registered nurses walked out for 38 days. (AFL-CIO blog, May 20)

National Nurses Week ‘on the move’

National Nurses Week kicked off May 11 in Washington, D.C., with an informational picket by nurses at the Washington Hospital Center, whose contract expired at midnight May 10. The nurses, represented by Nurses United of the National Capital Area, are demanding better staffing levels and challenging the hospital’s efforts to roll back wages and change working conditions. Nurses in D.C. for the National Nurses United legislative conference joined the picket line before staging their “Improving the quality of care” demonstration on Capitol Hill on May 12. (Union City, online daily newsletter of the Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO, May 10-12) On May 20, 1,300 RNs at the University of Chicago Medical Center voted to become the newest members of NNU, which is the largest nurses’ union in the U.S. (AFL-CIO blog, May 21)

Women’s bias suit against Wal-Mart

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted April 26 to affirm that class-action status be awarded to the suit brought by more than one million women employees charging Wal-Mart with gender discrimination. The suit is one of the largest class-action lawsuits in U.S. history. Rather than ’fess up and pay up, the billion-dollar global retailer and largest U.S. employer announced that it would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. (Wall Street Journal, April 27)

Women win lawsuit against Novartis

On May 17 a jury decided that Novartis Pharmaceuticals will have to pay 12 former female sales representatives compensatory damages of $3.36 million for pain, suffering and loss of employment. More than 5,600 other female sales employees can apply in coming months for similar damages, which could exceed $200 million. Calling this “a huge victory for working women,” plaintiff Holly J. Waters testified that she was fired when she was seven months pregnant for being pregnant. The May 18 New York Times reported, “Other women testified they were subject to hostile remarks, especially concerning pregnancy, and unfairly passed over for promotion in what they described as a sexist atmosphere controlled by male district managers.”

Defend union rights in Mexico

After the San Francisco Labor Council met with a delegation from the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas to learn about their struggle to maintain their 44,000-member union after government repression was used to break their general strike, it passed a resolution on May 10 calling on all affiliated unions and community organizations to picket the Mexican Consulate on May 14 to protest this repression.

As the resolution noted, the attacks on SME “mirror similar assaults on our pay and working conditions, like forced pay cuts on city workers in San Francisco, S.F. electronic workplace raids, the S.F. building trades struggle for work, union busting at Boron, Ca., and attempts to divide us like race hatred in Arizona. ... Standing in solidarity with SME is an act of resistance to our own struggles and part of our own fightback.”

On May 20, while Mexican President Felipe Calderón was being wined and dined at the White House, union members and labor rights activists picketed the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., to condemn Calderón’s repression of labor unions. Members of the Steelworkers union singled out Los Mineros, whose members have been on strike for almost three years at the Cananea mine in northwestern Mexico over health and safety violations.

Calderón is threatening to send federal troops to take over the mine and break the strike. Demonstrators chanted, “Unions united will never be defeated!” and waved signs reading, “Hands off Los Mineros” and “Respect workers’ rights.” Manny Armenta, subdistrict director for USW District 12, told Union City, “There is no need for bloodshed and we will not stand for it.” (May 21)