Nurses Join AFL-CIO

    Here's an interesting development. The California Nurses Association, and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, joined the AFL-CIO on Thursday. CNA represents 75,000 nurses throughout the country. It isn't so much the affiliation that I find interesting--it's one of the reasons given: the Federation's endorsement of single-payer health care as the solution to the nation's failed profit-based, insurance-and-drug-industry controlled system. CNA has supported single-payer for sometime now.

Comments

[Daniel Millstone]

Nurses are already represented by several other unions including the SEIU. Will this affiliation give them protection from raiding from AFL-CIO members? From Unite to Win?

[tasini]

CErtainly from AFL-CIO raids. There have been non-raiding agreements between some unions in each Federation--SEIU and AFSCME comes to mind--but I haven't followed every instance. I have not heard of large-scale, consistent raiding underway. Doesn't mean it's not happening.

[bigfall]

Just this week? No way! CNA has always been at peace with AFL-CIOiana!

On a serious note, Rose Ann Demoro, CNA's Executive Director, is an old pal of Trumka's.

[matt w]

I have to say, I never got the gut-level reaction against "raiding" in the union movement. It strikes me that allowing workers to change who represents them when their priorities shift is an unalloyed good.

Where I live, municipal employees were so dissatisfied with AFSCME's work on their behalf that might have walked away from unions entirely if they couldn't have jumped to another. I know it creates friction at the upper echelons, but this should be about who represents members' interests most effectively.