Atherton police are bracing for the town's quiet streets to be flooded today with hundreds of nurses for a rally outside the home of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. The California Nurses Association says the noontime rally — which is expected to draw up to 1,000 nurses to the former eBay executive's house on Edge Road near Menlo-Atherton High School — is a "response to a decision by candidate Whitman to mount an offensive attack directly against the" union.

Here’s another thing we don’t understand: Why Meg Whitman keeps picking fights with the California Nurses’ Association. Having already erected a new web site exclusively dedicated to brawling with the nurses’ union, and sent a personal letter to every member of the CNA, Her Megness announced yesterday that she is “forming an advisory board of nurses to advise her on issues during the campaign.”

In a victory for registered nurses at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, an independent arbitrator has ruled that the hospital violated the nurses’ union contract last January when it froze the Defined Benefit Pension Plan. The arbitrator has ordered the hospital to promptly unfreeze the defined benefit pension plan for the nurses, restore the contribution to the plan retroactive to the date on which the Hospital froze the plan, and to continue to fund the plan going forward.

The nurses started the fight even before Whitman won the Republican gubernatorial nomination on June 8, launching an actress dressed as ''Queen Meg'' who trails Whitman at campaign events and private fundraisers. ''I was surprised that they just came out, right out of the box, attacking me,'' Whitman said during a recent campaign stop in Roseville, a Sacramento surburb. ''And I said you know what, I am going to reach out to these nurses to make sure that all nurses know my position, and then they can make an informed decision.''

The State Labor Relations Commission (SLRC) today issued a formal complaint against Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), citing the organization for bargaining in bad faith and depriving nurses of their union rights following CHA’s decision to prematurely cease negotiations, declare impasse and unilaterally slash nurses’ retiree health benefits. The SLRC will be scheduling hearings on the complaint issued against CHA.

America's nurses are on the march — literally and figuratively. Consider just two recent developments: In Minnesota, 12,000 nurses from 14 hospitals walked off the job for a day last month, the largest such action in U.S. history, in a bid to improve staffing levels and to secure standardized nurse-patient ratios. In Texas, almost 2,000 nurses at five hospitals voted to form unions in a two-week period ending in June. This was particularly notable because Texas has the third largest number of RNs in the country — after California and New York — but previously only one private hospital in Texas was organized.

Rose Ann DeMoro, a former supermarket cashier from the suburbs of St. Louis who has risen to become one of America’s most powerful labor leaders, recalls that her tough but saintly mother had two maxims. One: “Keep reaching.” Two: “If someone hits you, and you don’t hit ’em back, you’re going to get it when you get home.” DeMoro, executive director of the 86,000 member California Nurses Association and the 155,000-member National Nurses United, says she has faithfully lived by the first — and never had to worry much about the second.

The California Nurses Association has taken on powerful people before, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators from both major parties, and has scored resounding wins. In each showdown, the 86,000-person union made full use of its key advantage – the appeal of its members' professions – while pressing hard for policies that benefited nurses.

The nurses group wants Brown as the next governor, but Whitman is reaching out directly to individual nurses. Meg Whitman is trying her hand at a manner of union busting – and her degree of success will help determine whether she's elected governor in November.