Chris Rauber, Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

The California Nurses Association is seeking a secret-ballot union representation election at California Pacific Medical Center's Pacific campus, which it calls "one of the few hospitals in San Francisco where the RNs remain non-union."

The Oakland-based union, which represents 85,000 registered nurses in the state, said it asked the National Labor Relations Board on Sept. 5 to schedule an election for the 600 RNs who work on CPMC's Pacific campus in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Nurses are scheduled to rally outside the hospital at noon Tuesday, Sept. 10, in favor of an NLRB-sponsored election.

California Pacific officials could not immediately be reached for comment about CNA's Sept. 6 announcement.

Eight hundred RNs at CPMC's campuses at St. Luke's Hospital and in the Richmond District are already represented by the feisty union, led by longtime Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro.

Those nurses ratified a new contract in April, right after City Hall officials and CPMC, led by CEO Warren Browner, M.D., agreed on a tentative compromise solution to a long battle over the size, shape and scope of a $2 billion new campus at Cathedral Hill and rebuild of St. Luke's.

That agreement was ratified by all sides over the summer.