Two large and powerful health care labor unions have signed a pact that is expected to provide a shot in the arm for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Under the pact announced on March 19, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CAN/NNOC) will work together to bring union representation to all nonunion registered nurses and other health care employees while stepping up efforts to enact the Employee Free Choice Act. The two groups are the largest unions in the nation representing health care workers and registered nurses, according to a statement from both organizations.
“This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge health care industry layoffs and attacks on RN economic and professional standards and patient-care conditions,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.
The agreement ends a dispute between the two groups, which have been competitors in the effort to unionize registered nurses. For the past year, SEIU has accused the nurses’ union of disrupting efforts to unionize 8,300 hospital workers in Ohio, and the nurses’ union has accused SEIU of harassing its leaders, according to a report in The New York Times.
“We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country’s broken health care system,” said SEIU President Andy Stern, “and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all health care workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation, and make the new health care system operational.”
In addition to the organizing pact, the two unions also jointly endorsed measures to allow states to adopt a single-payer system or expanded and updated Medicare for all as a step toward health care reform.
The new agreement comes three weeks after the announcement that CNA/NNOC, with 85,000 current members, will be uniting with the United American Nurses and the Massachusetts Nurses Union to form the largest RN union in the United States with 150,000 members.
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