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|  |  California Nurses Authorize Affiliation with AFL-CIOPress Release September 27, 2005 OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Hours after Warren Beatty offered lavish praise on the California Nurses Association for having "stood up to the arrogance of power and money" in its well chronicl ed challenge to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his corporate backers, delegates to the organization's biennial convention Friday authorized the CNA leadership to align with working people across the U.S. by affiliating with the national AFL-CIO. By a nearly unanimous vote, the close to 500 delegates approved a bylaw proposal permitting the CNA Board to enter into affiliation talks with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization, a federation of 52 unions representing over 8 million people. As CNA leaders and delegates noted, the move would enable CNA to help champion a transformation of the nation's health care system and provide strong allies in a common front to resist the "aggressive agenda of the corporations and the far right and their allies in Washington and Sacramento and their escalating attack on workers, low and moderate income people, and unions," said CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. "Now more than ever we need a cohesive, powerful labor movement," DeMoro said. In his address to the convention, Beatty encouraged CNA to take the step of joining the AFL-CIO and noted his own membership in an AFL-CIO affiliated- union. Similarly, Lou Paulson, president of the California Professional Firefighters, AFL-CIO encouraged the delegates to join the national federation. Nurses, firefighters and teachers, represented at the CNA convention by California Teachers Association President Barbara Kerr, have led the opposition to Schwarzenegger's policies, and CNA leaders noted an AFL-CIO linkage would strengthen that alliance. The move, said CNA leaders, will also encourage the building of a national movement of RNs to lead efforts on healthcare reform, strengthen patient protections, and defend and enhance professional and economic standards for RNs across the U.S. For CNA, she said the top priority will be "pressing the campaign to establish a universal single payer healthcare system based on a single standard of care. That can not be achieved without the power of the labor movement. Now it will be up to us to take our unified power and the passion of nurses across the country to change the face of healthcare in America." CNA, and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee will not be joining any other union and policies will continue to be made by the organization's all direct care RN Board of Directors. The CNA/NNOC represents 65,000 RNs. DeMoro said the participation of the legendary actor, director and political activist Beatty, who was joined by his wife, actress Annette Bening, and actor Sean Penn, which drew national media coverage, reflected the desire of prominent figures to "come to our convention and encourage nurses to fight for the changes needed in our country." California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, State Treasurer Phil Angelides, documentary filmmaker and producer Robert Greenwald, and consumer activist Jamie Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, also attended. CNA also paid tribune to RN volunteers who have already been sent by CNA and NNOC to Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to assist with the hurricane disaster relief effort. CNA has already sent more than 170 RNs with up to 40 more set to go on Monday. Re-affirming call for a universal health care system At the convention, CNA also reaffirmed its call for a single payer healthcare system premised on such principles as a single standard of care for all, universal benefits, mandated staffing levels (such as CNA has won in California with RN-to-patient ratios) and with funding from healthcare corporations. CNA delegates also adopted a number of far reaching resolutions, including calls for an immediate end to the U.S. war in Iraq, public financing for election campaigns to decrease the corrupting influence of corporate money, opposition to the privatization of Social Security, tax reform to make corporations and wealthy individuals pay their fair share, opposition to NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements, labor law reform to protect the right of workers to organize without employer coercion and threats, a code of practice for the ethical international recruitment of nurses, and increased funding for nursing education.
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