Health Care Talk (HCTalk.com)

[Denver Dave]

Three nurses unions merged on Monday to form the largest-ever labor organization for U.S. medical professionals, which is expected to wield greater clout in collective bargaining and the national healthcare debate.

The merger, approved unanimously by delegates at a founding convention in Phoenix, unifies the CNA, which has 83,000 members in California and several other states; the United American Nurses, with 45,000 members, mostly in the Midwest, and the 22,000-member Massachusetts Nurses Association.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B63VW20091207

[Denver Dave]

Brand-New Nurses Union Aims to Ramp Up Organizing, Push for Single-Payer
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5282/nnu_creating_a_new_voice_for_nurses/

Earlier this year, CNA and SEIU signed an agreement that CNA–and now NNU–will organize nurses whenever SEIU is organizing the rest of hospital workers. It was a victory for CNA and NNU’s strategy of craft unionism over the industrial union approach of organizing all hospital workers in one union.