RISING TIDE OF WORKERS STRUGGLES IN AMERICA — SIGN OF THE TIME

Posted on October 4 2011 by admin

 

Labor Notes, October 3, 2011
Tacoma Teachers Strike Shows Defiance Can Attract Sympathy

  • A nearly two-week strike by teachers in Tacoma, Washington, defied state laws against public sector work stoppages—and showed that when much-vilified public workers take bold action, they can win public sympathy.

    A nearly two-week strike by teachers in Tacoma, Washington, defied state laws against public sector work stoppages—and showed that when much-vilified public workers take bold action, they can win public sympathy.
    Members voted by 87 percent to walk off the job September 12 to defeat management’s bid to replace seniority with favoritism. They stayed out until September 23, winning an agreement that preserves seniority for now, and a committee that will study changing the system for years to come.
    The district’s plan would have taken the focus “off of teaching and onto remaining popular with the administrator,” said Ann Welton, an elementary teacher of 19 years. “We want to spend our time teaching, not looking over our shoulders,” added Laurie Goodrich, a teacher at McCarver Elementary.
    Administrators tried hard to break their resolve. The district made robo calls to teachers nearly every day of the strike, threatening dismissal for those who stayed out. “I’d wake up at 4 in the morning and wonder if I was going to get fired,” Welton said. “But you’d get back out on the line and things felt better.”
    During the strike, the 1,900-member Tacoma Education Association (an NEA affiliate) succeeded in shutting down schools in Washington’s third-largest district. Just 88 teachers crossed the line, Welton noted.
    The YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, and local churches watched Tacoma’s 28,000 students during the strike. Many spent their days outside in parks. Teachers collected food at several strike events for kids who rely on school meals.
    The logjam in contract bargaining occurred over teacher transfer and reassignments.
    Administrators originally proposed making such decisions based on 10 points, six of which were “immeasurable and undefined,” said Rich Wood, a union spokesperson.
    Criteria included “collaborations with others,” “interactions with students’ families,” “whether or not you’re sufficiently collegial,” and maintaining “a safe classroom environment.”
    The district dismissed the union’s proposed alterations to seniority, refusing any compromise.
    The administration remained unmoved and teachers walked the line until the parties hammered out an agreement September 22 when the governor called them to a mediation session in the capital.
    Under the agreement, the district will continue to base assignments on grade level, experience, and qualifications for a year while a joint committee, composed equally of union and district representatives, looks at changes to the system. Any recommendation must be approved by two-thirds of the committee.
    Teachers were told that if they capitulated on seniority, the district would back off on its other concession demands, including a 1.9 percent pay cut and class size increase of two students. “Seniority is imperfect, but seniority is transparent,” said Nathan Bowling, a high school social studies teacher. However the system changes, he said, it must remain transparent.
    Existing pay schedules will be extended and class sizes will remain the same under the new deal.
    TO THE COURTHOUSE
    When teachers walked out, the district took the union to court—skipping a scheduled bargaining session.
    Fifty teachers and supporters rallied in front of the courthouse as a judge issued a temporary restraining order demanding the two parties return to the table.
    One provision in the restraining order forced the union negotiating team, officers, and staff back to work. Since the membership went unmentioned, only the eight rank-and-file teachers named in the decision went back to work.
    The district ordered all teachers into the classroom the next day. None showed up.
    As teachers met at the Tacoma Dome stadium that day to vote whether to continue the strike, hundreds of students assembled outside, chanting “Teacher,” “Power,” “Teacher,” “Power.” Emboldened by their students and by the real language of the restraining order, 93 percent of teachers voted to persist.
    The students had marched to the Tacoma Dome from a rally at the district office, organized through Facebook. “I invited 50 people I knew,” said August Wimberger, a junior at Foss High School. “It just blew up.”
    Though parents’ reactions to the strike were mixed, Wimberger noted that after students rallied, he saw “a more positive outlook on the strike.” Students understood that pay was a subordinate issue in the dispute. “We care about fairness for our teachers,” Wimberger said.
    The Washington Education Association set up an informational website for community members. In addition, to reach those in poor neighborhoods with less computer access, teachers organized 50 people to canvass around each of the five high schools over five days, hoping to build even more support in the community.
    UNITED IN ANGER
    Student solidarity bolstered teachers’ morale, and the district’s efforts to intimidate teachers often backfired, spreading unity in anger rather than fear.
    When teachers received notice of the restraining order, some were scared, but strike captains had alerted their colleagues that the letters were coming and explained the legalities. Teachers angrily noted the district spent at least $2,000 on postage for the mailing.
    Powerful foundations that push an agenda hostile to public education and its unionized teachers entered the mix as well. Vibrant Schools Tacoma, a coalition underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, poured out propaganda against striking teachers. The group penned a letter to the editor backing the district’s proposed staffing policy, and for months, its website has featured survey data supposedly touting community support for undermining seniority.
    Despite voting by 99 percent to ratify the agreement, rank and filers don’t know what will happen if the committee can’t reach an agreement on seniority by the 2012 school year. Teachers are predicting the old system will remain in place.
    Whether or not seniority rights are safe, Welton said the strike had a positive effect on the union. A building rep for six years, she had a hard time before the strike recruiting younger members to union work. “Now I’ve got some of the younger teachers really interested,” she said.
    And though history and social studies text books lay dormant for two weeks, students received lessons they won’t soon forget.
    “Many students learned more through real-world experiences about democracy, civil disobedience, and being a part of a community than we could have learned from books in a year,” Wimberger said.
    —
    Labor Notes, September 30, 2011
    Unions Rally to Wall Street Occupation
     Protesters united under the banner of “We are the 99 percent” have occupied the Wall Street area for two weeks. Now several New York unions are planning rallies in support, taking a stand against runaway corporate power.
    Since September 17 protesters united under the banner of “We are the 99%” have occupied Wall Street—or at least a park a few blocks north. This loose and varied encampment of several hundred mostly young people has been taking a stand against runaway corporate power in the United States and the incredible inequality that exists today.
    To this end, they have been practicing nonviolent direct action: leading small and larger marches around the Wall Street area, protesting Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis, picketing at Verizon headquarters with Communications Workers fighting for good contracts, and disrupting auctions at Sotheby’s—which has locked out its unionized workers. (For a good story on the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, check out Liza Featherstone’s coverage in Newsday.)
    Readers might not have heard about Occupy Wall Street had it not been for what happened last Saturday, when OWS marched to Union Square. As videos show, protesters were met with police attacks, including violent arrests and the pepper-spraying of people in custody.
    A few professors at the City University of New York, some of us officers of our union, the Professional Staff Congress, began to plan a solidarity demonstration against these repressive police tactics. We put out a call which was quickly signed by many others: individuals and leaders from the PSC and the UAW; longtime activists and new organizers; journalists and other writers; students and more.
    This demo is today, at One Police Plaza in Manhattan at 5:30 p.m. The OWS protesters have voted to join us, and many other groups have now put out a call to come.
    But ours is now one of many solidarity efforts being launched. According to reports, Transport Workers Union Local 100 has endorsed OWS, and a big contingent from SEIU 32BJ, the big janitors’ local, arrived Thursday, with banners and signs.
    Perhaps most important, a coalition including A Strong Economy for All, which includes many of New York’s largest unions, along with Communities for Change, the Working Families Party, and others, have called for a solidarity demonstration on October 5 at 4:30 p.m., starting at City Hall and marching to Zuccotti Park. These organizations mounted the May 12 action that brought more than 10,000 people to Wall Street.
    Union Solidarity Two Ways
    From where I sit, these are amazing developments. Union solidarity is expressing itself at two levels, both of which are key to the New York City labor movement but have national implications as well.
    Today’s rally is protesting police tactics, which have crushed everyone’s capacity to demonstrate in New York since the Giuliani era in the 1990s—though it got markedly worse after 9/11/2001. Demonstrating in New York has meant, at best, being trapped inside metal pens with strict crowd control, if you’re lucky enough to get a permit. Unpermitted marches have been met with violence, massing of officers, and other dangerous and intimidating tactics.
    Unions should be out in front challenging these restrictions on the right to peaceful assembly—and today will be a step in that direction.
    But more, these unions are now coming out as part of the “99 percent.” As in Seattle in 1999, when anarchists and young protesters committed to direct democracy were joined by their brothers and sisters in the unions, OWS has now opened up a space where protesters and union members—usually coming from different cultures and backgrounds—are finding common ground. They’re saying the 99 percent can’t afford not to unite. http://labornotes.org/2011/09/unions-rally-wall-street-occupation
    I mean, this is a city where its richest citizen is also its mayor—and some unions have spent a lot of time being very cozy with that poster child of the 1 percent.
    The unions’ stand against the 1 percent comes just after the membership of New York state’s Public Employees Federation rejected an austerity contract this week. PEF President Ken Brynien said his rank-and-file members “clearly feel they are being asked to sacrifice more than others, particularly in light of the pending expiration of the state’s millionaire’s tax.”
    It’s unclear where this will all lead. But it’s good to see some action.
    —
    Labor Notes, September 28, 2011
    492 Rallies Tell Congress: Don’t Kill the Post Office
  •  The nation’s postal unions organized 492 rallies across the country Tuesday in support of federal legislation that would relieve the burdensome requirement that postal employees pre-fund decades worth of retirees’ benefits.
    The nation’s four postal unions organized events at 492 locations across the country Tuesday in support of federal legislation that would relieve the burdensome requirement that postal employees pre-fund decades worth of retirees’ benefits.
    The bill (HB 1351) currently has 216 cosponsors in the House, but President Obama’s latest position would grant the Postal Service only a two-year reprieve. Obama also recommended killing Saturday delivery, which postal unionists say would create a “death spiral” for the service. The Postal Service is proposing to close 3,500 post offices and lay off 120,000 workers, breaking its new contract with the Postal Workers union.
    Chanting, “One – Three – Five – One, Congress get the job done,” and “We don’t want a bail out, we just want the mail out,” postal workers in southeast Michigan withstood a rainy afternoon to demand Congressional action.
    “True to form, rain or shine, we’ll be here,” said Cornell Fears, a member of Letter Carriers Branch 1 in Detroit.
    Some of the largest protests were reported in Melville and Buffalo, New York; Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where hundreds gathered. Fifteen hundred turned out in Boston.
    Sally Davidow of the Postal Workers (APWU) reported that Tom Reed, a freshman Tea Party Republican from Rochester, New York, announced he would sign on to the bill after a big rally Tuesday.
    North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
    Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
    “There was a lot of new faces I’d never seen before,” said Dick, referring to his co-workers. “It was the first rally they’d ever been to. They’ve been awakened as to what’s going on.”
    Dick said the events educated the public about the real reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of retiree health benefits—about $5.5 billion each year.
    “It’s not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around,” he said, but “more and more people are getting it.”
    The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October 10-16 as part of its “America Wants to Work – Good Jobs Now” initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and preserving the good jobs we have—including those in the postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
    —
    Labor Notes, September 26, 2011
    Longshore Union Protests ‘Police Brutality’ as President Surrenders

    A grain exporter’s attempt to operate a new facility without longshore labor has met stiff resistance in the Pacific Northwest. Police responded by breaking up protests and arresting about 135 unionists since July, prompting the union to sue to stop “ongoing police brutality.” Photo: Dawn Des Brisay

    An attempt by a big grain exporter to operate a new state-of-the art facility without longshore union labor has met stiff resistance from the rank and file in the Pacific Northwest.
    Police have responded by breaking up protests and arresting about 135 since July, injuring peaceful demonstrators and pulling unionists from their homes and cars. The Longshore union (ILWU) filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to stop “ongoing police brutality and harassment.” International President “Big Bob” McEllrath turned himself in to face misdemeanor charges Monday for blockading a train carrying scab grain.
    EGT Development had planned to run its $200 million terminal in Longview, Washington, without the ILWU.
    Longshore workers vowed to save these good jobs, and initiated a series of escalating actions. They began in July with simple protests and moved to physically blocking grain-hauling trains and occupying the new terminal. The revolt culminated September 8 with 10,000 tons of grain dumped on the tracks.
    Early in the morning 800 dockworkers from Washington and Oregon invaded the EGT terminal and opened the hoppers on a 107-car train..
    Hundreds had massed in Longview after a rumor circulated that police had broken McEllrath’s arm in an earlier scuffle. Ports in Tacoma and Seattle shut down in wildcat actions as workers headed for Longview.
    The ranks in Tacoma and Seattle activated strike teams. Member-activists started making phone calls at 9 p.m., finishing hours later. They met in Longview, about 130 miles south of Seattle, at 4 a.m.
    Every other major grain terminal on the West Coast is operated by ILWU labor, and the union asserts that EGT’s goal is to break the union, ending generations of good jobs.
    ARRESTS
    After the September 8 action, police began plucking members out of their homes, off the streets, and out of parking lots. Ten days later, about 35 had been arrested, mostly on misdemeanor trespassing charges. All have been released, and the union is paying their $250 to $500 bail.
    “They’re rounding us up like we’re murderers,” said Dan Coffman, president of the Longview local. Five police dragged one union official out of his car by his hair, roughed him up, and slammed him into the back of a squad car. Another member was hauled away while caring for his children, two and seven years old, leaving them to fend for themselves in an empty house. Yet another, a part-time minister, was arrested by police wielding assault rifles.
    Insisting the one-by-one manhunt was unsafe, ILWU attorneys approached the Cowlitz County sheriff to coordinate the orderly surrender of the entire membership of Longview’s Local 21—all 200 members.
    The 200 marched silently in two lines from the hiring hall to the courthouse, accompanied by a third line of family members and retirees. Coffman offered his membership up for arrest.
    According to workers listening to the police radio band, 30 officers in full riot gear waited inside while the unionists waited outside.
    A sheriff spokesman—emerging later to talk to media—said they were unprepared to arrest so many. Three hours later, police arrested Local 21 Vice President Jake Whiteside in a church parking lot, handcuffing him in front of children and the elderly.
    SHIPMENTS RESTART
    Grain shipments have been halted to the EGT terminal since July, when the confrontation began.
    But EGT decided to force the issue by rolling another train into the terminal September 21 with an 80-strong police escort in riot gear. Three Local 21 officers, including Coffman, were arrested along with nine women from the union’s Ladies Auxiliary during a sit-in on the train tracks.
    The protesters sat peacefully as police began handcuffing them. One woman, requesting that police be careful with a previously injured shoulder, cried out in pain as an officer wrenched her arm behind her back. She was hospitalized with a torn rotator cuff and arrested the moment she was released. A union member who had moved to assist her on the tracks was pepper sprayed.
    The ILWU is calling for supporters to gather at a community solidarity night in downtown Longview on Thursday.
    WHO’S VIOLENT?
    Union members have shown considerable restraint in the face of a tough situation and constant provocations from police and EGT employees. An EGT worker ran his car into two ILWU members without penalty. A longshore worker allegedly kicked a car that followed, dented it, and was charged with a felony.
    The union says allegations that workers held six security guards hostage for four hours were a fabrication of the Longview chief of police. Coffman confronted the chief about the lie.
    “He denied he said it and tried to modify his story,” said Leal Sundet, one of four ILWU officers on the union’s coast committee.
    The mainstream press latched on, publishing inflammatory pieces decrying the violence. “I’d be surprised if it wasn’t set up purposefully by the PR firm hired by EGT,” Sundet said. “Anything that labor does is portrayed as some kind of act of violence.”
    EGT has also hired Special Response Corporation, a security firm based in Maryland that specializes in strikebreaking.
    During one September incident, a camera caught police grabbing a union member by the throat. “Who’s telling the truth here?” asked Coffman. “We have a city government here that’s basically EGT’s security force. They’re beating up people that have lived in this community their entire lives.”
    Coffman says members are furious that police singled out the union president in a crowd of hundreds and tackled him to the ground.
    McEllrath was detained and released after the September 7 incident, but turned himself in to county authorities Monday after learning of a warrant for his arrest. He was cited on misdemeanor charges of trespassing in the second degree and blocking or delaying a train.
    All work on the West Coast ports stopped for 15 minutes as McEllrath turned himself over to police. He was accompanied to the station by Ken Riley, a vice president in the East Coast Longshore union (ILA). Riley is also president of an ILA local in Charleston, South Carolina, that saw five members slapped with felony charges 11 years ago after police attacked a picket line.
    As Riley traveled the country garnering solidarity for the “Charleston 5,” he found it in Longview, where ILWU members voted to assess themselves $20 a month for the defense fund.
    The 5, who were protesting a shipper’s attempt to use non-union labor, had the felony charges dropped after 20 months of house arrest.
    NLRB A ‘TOOL OF COMMERCE’
    The authorities’ attempts to quell the uprising in Longview have not quashed it. Workers defied the initial temporary restraining order, sought by the NLRB, that banned any picketing that blocked cars or trains.
    After the grain-dumping, the NLRB sought an injunction against the protests. EGT wanted to force the union to order its members to cease any picket activity.
    “We don’t care what the board thinks,” Sundet said. “We have no respect for it. It’s a tool of commerce.” At an injunction enforcement hearing, the judge ordered the union to pay for the ruined grain and damage to the terminal pending a study of the cost.
    A federal judge issued the injunction, ordering workers to obey the Taft-Hartley law and not to block movement in and out of the terminal.
    Initially EGT wanted to operate its facility without a union. But the company settled on a subcontractor that hires through Operating Engineers Local 701, a black sheep organization expelled from the Oregon building trades council for previous raids.
    Union members put about as much stock in the AFL-CIO to resolve the conflict with the Operating Engineers as they do in the NLRB. Motions passed in the Washington and Oregon state labor councils and the Southwestern Washington building trades convention failed to budge Local 701.
    AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka ruled the dispute a jurisdictional matter, but ILWU won’t pursue charges, because it will entertain no argument that any other union has rights to longshore work. Sundet noted the irony of Trumka’s quietude while the ILWU fights for its life.
    As president of the Mineworkers, Trumka led the 1989 Pittston mine strike, which used waves of mass civil disobedience to occupy the mine, resulting in injunctions and fines that—on paper—bankrupted the union.
    “The tactics they used were successful at the end of the day,” Sundet said.
    SOLIDARITY FROM NEAR, FAR
    ILWU activists say they are confident. The union relies on direct local-to-local solidarity for its power, on a global scale, and messages of solidarity are pouring in from all over—including Wisconsin.
    Longview is a densely unionized sawmill town, to the extent that even small bars are still organized. People understand the struggle, and they’ve backed the union, putting signs in shop windows. A retired sawmill worker walked into the Local 21 office, handing Coffman $20 for the strike fund.
    “Working people are figuring it out,” said Coffman. “The 98 percent, we better join arms.”
    The EGT facility could change the West Coast grain industry. Grain elevators in Montana load rail cars that shuttle back and forth from Longview. Grain is transferred to waiting ships in a highly automated process—the terminal might employ only 30-50 workers total, 40 percent fewer than other terminals on the coast.
    Looming over the confrontation was the Pacific Northwest’s master grain contract, set to expire October 1. The union and the employer group, which EGT refuses to join, reached a new master agreement September 14. The tentative agreement lasts a year, includes a $1-per-hour raise, and follows the pattern set by previous contracts.
    The ILWU’s bold action looks to have isolated EGT, holding off its bid to ratchet down standards in the industry—for now.
    —
    Labor Notes,  23. September 2011
    21,000 Strike Giant California Hospital Chains
    Sarking the biggest strike ever at California health care giant Kaiser Permanente, 4,000 members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers took to picket lines Wednesday through Friday.
    They were joined on sympathy strikes by 17,000 nurses across California, including thousands at Kaiser facilities in Northern California who settled their contract last year.
    Striking NUHW members included professional and technical groups in both Northern and Southern California, as well as RNs at the Los Angeles Medical Center who have held two short strikes already this year. They have been locked in tense negotiations with Kaiser since they left the Service Employees (SEIU) last year to join NUHW.
    TAKING ADVANTAGE
    Despite sizable profits—$5.7 billion in the last three years—Kaiser has been pushing health care and retirement cuts at the bargaining table, and NUHW members say they are dangerously short staffed.
    “We’re putting a stake in the ground to stop this slide at Kaiser,” said Jim Clifford, a bilingual therapist at a clinic in Otay. “Like the rest of corporate America, they’re using the economy as excuse to cut benefits.”
    Clifford said wait times for patients at his clinic have exploded, echoing reports across the Kaiser system.
    LaNeta Fitzhugh, a neonatal intensive care nurse at the LA Medical Center for the past 30 years, said that Kaiser’s staffing system regularly leaves her hospital understaffed.
    Nurses routinely skip lunch and work through their breaks to cover patients, Fitzhugh said, and their 12-hour shifts are routinely stretched out to 16 or even 20 hours.
    “We put proposals on the table that spelled out the staffing levels our patients need, but Kaiser rejected them,” Fitzhugh said.
    BREAKING THE FIGHTERS
    Last year, NUHW lost a bitter election contest to take 45,000 service and technical workers at Kaiser out of the Service Employees. The election was marred by widespread intimidation, and in June a federal judge found Kaiser guilty of colluding with SEIU by withholding raises from Clifford and his co-workers after they joined NUHW. Clifford believes that is why Kaiser is taking such a hard line against the union now.
    “We’re an activist union willing to stand up to Kaiser,” he said.
    Clifford believes he and his co-workers are not an isolated case. “It’s not only about our benefits and our staffing,” he said. “This affects everyone working at Kaiser. We’re the first target, but if other unions at Kaiser don’t stand up with us, they’re next.”
    NURSES IN
    Kaiser nurses, members of the California Nurses Association, walked out in sympathy with NUHW RNs.
    CNA’s members also struck at 12 Sutter hospitals and Children’s Hospital in Oakland.
    By threatening to cut retirement and boost health care costs, Kaiser and Sutter threaten all hospital workers, said Martha Kuhl, secretary-treasurer of National Nurses United, the national union to which the California Nurses Association is affiliated.
    Both Kaiser and Sutter kept facilities open with nurse managers and plenty of scabs—spending so much they exceeded contractual staffing levels routinely ignored with their regular workforce. “They’ve got enough money to fly in strike-breakers, house them, and feed them. Why can’t they pay us?” Fitzhugh said.
    Sutter will lock out nurses for four additional days, while Kaiser welcomed their nurses back after their daylong sympathy action.
    Kuhl said many of the strike-breakers are Southern nurses. One she met said she hoped crossing the picket line wouldn’t harm her relationship with union nurses.
    FACING DOWN 150 CONCESSIONS
    Ann Gaebler, a neonatal nurse at Alta Bates Summit hospital for 30 years, said nurses realized they have to stick together to defeat the takeaways demanded by the two hospital chains. Nurses in the Summit chain face 150 concessions in their bargaining.
    Picket lines were strong, Gaebler said, as honking cars and cheering picketers drowned her out.
    Along with pay and benefit givebacks, Gaebler said nurses are incensed by demands to force them onto short-term disability leave, paid at a much lower rate, if they use more than seven sick days.
    “They’re also trying to limit our voice,” Gaebler added, pointing to demands to eliminate committees where nurses and managers examine patterns of care and investigate problems.
    Managers would prefer to make staffing decisions that maximize profits and not patient safety, nurses say, despite already enjoying healthy margins. Kaiser hospitals have made $1.6 billion already this year, and giant bonuses are the norm for top executives. Sutter has booked $3.7 billion in profits over the past six years.
    Eileen Prendiville, a nurse at Sutter’s California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, decried full-page newspaper ads purchased by the hospital association that claim nurses make $150,000 a year.
    “Nobody makes that much,” Prendiville said, unless they’re working nonstop overtime on a night shift.
    Sutter is seeking a two-tier pay scheme, dropping pay for entry-level nurses by 5 percent.
    The work of CNA and NUHW to fight concessions is made more difficult by SEIU, which instructed tens of thousands of members to cross picket lines. NUHW broke away from SEIU after its leaders were ousted for challenging SEIU.
    Kuhl noted that SEIU had agreed to many of the concessions sought by Kaiser and Sutter at her hospital, Children’s in Oakland, and is believed to have agreed to similar takeways elsewhere. Yet its “me-too” agreement with Kaiser would pull its members up to higher contract standards—if CNA and NUHW achieve them. “It’s the height of cowardice,” Kuhl said. “They want the benefits but don’t want to fight for them.”
    Nurses at the Sutter facility in Novato, a small Marin County hospital, were so intimidated by management they wouldn’t give their names. They said they struck because they’re outraged by management’s demands to “float” them to different units of the hospital irrespective of training—and by the offer of a four-year contract with a pay freeze.
    “Employers like Sutter are declaring war on workers,” Prendiville said. “The implications for safe staffing if they succeed are horrifying. We can not and will not accept it.”
    * * *
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