LABOR

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CALIFORNIA NURSES PICK AFL-CIO OVER CHANGE TO WIN BECAUSE OF SINGLE
PAYER STANCE

The California Nurses Association, one of the nation's largest unions of
registered nurses, announced yesterday that it was affiliating with the
AFL-CIO to join the labor federation's campaign for universal health
insurance. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the 75,000- member
nurses' union, said that after a century as an independent union, the
nurses joined the AFL-CIO because of what they see as unprecedented
momentum for comprehensive health-care reform. She said her union
opposed any reforms that would leave private insurers as the system's
gatekeepers and chose the AFL-CIO because of its vote this year to
support a single-payer system under which one entity would finance all
health care. . . The nurses' decision underlines continuing tension
between the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, a rival federation of unions that
broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005, led by the Service Employees
International Union, a prominent player in health care. The SEIU has
organized nurses aggressively, and its president, Andy Stern, has
publicly allied with business groups to try to forge a political
consensus behind universal health care. But Stern has not made a
single-payer system a precondition, saying he is open to any plan that
would cover all 46 million uninsured Americans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/
AR2007052101435.html

http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/pr05212007.cfm

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