NNU: ‘Reminder of who is the best candidate for workers’

On the eve of a one-week strike by 1,200 Los Angeles registered nurses, Sen. Bernie Sanders Sunday sent a letter to the chief executive of a major Los Angeles hospital backing the nurses and calling on hospital management to “negotiate in good faith and agree to a fair contract.”

The RNs, members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United will begin a seven-day strike Tuesday, March 15 at Los Angeles Medical Center, a major Los Angeles hospital that is the Southern California flagship of one of the biggest and wealthiest healthcare systems in the U.S., Kaiser Permanente.

Nurses are striking to press their concerns over inadequate staffing that they say puts patients at risk, as well as the need for economic improvements to assure the hospital can retain experienced RNs and recruit new nurses.

In a letter to LAMC Executive Director William Grice, Sanders urged him “to bargain in good faith with the Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center nurses for a fair contract that values their role in providing high quality health care” and agree to a fair contract “as soon as possible.”

“With this call, Sen. Sanders is demonstrating once again that he is the strongest advocate of workers as they advocate for the broader public interest – in the case of nurses, public health and safety – as well as for their own working conditions and livelihood,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, Executive Director of NNU and CNA.

“No candidate has consistently stood with working people for decades – whether on picket lines, proposing legislation to strengthen worker and labor conditions, or opposing attacks on working people, such as unfair trade agreements – than Bernie Sanders,” said DeMoro.

“That is a message that nurses will continue to carry tomorrow across the Midwest, as well as in the states that have yet to vote, including California,” DeMoro added.

DeMoro noted that throughout his career, including the current Presidential campaign, Sanders has regularly joined workers on picket lines, has a 98 percent voting record with labor, and in October introduced new legislation, the Workplace Democracy Act, to reform outdated labor law to assist workers who want to form unions.

LAMC RNs voted to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United last July, and are now seeking their first CNA collective bargaining contract with Kaiser which has recorded over $14.4 billion in profits the past six years. 

“We are embarrassed by the lack of resources Kaiser is putting into this hospital,” said Aisha Ealey, a neo-natal intensive care unit RN at LAMC.  “If Kaiser is planning on using this medical center as its teaching hospital for their Medical School, it is critical to improve patient care conditions especially for our region’s sickest babies and kids, end floating (the assignment of RNs to areas outside their expertise) and provide for a fair contract for nurses.”