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GUEST: David Bacon, labor journalist and photographer, author of “Children of NAFTA,” and programmer at KPFA, Pacifica Radio

Last week the California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, joined the AFL-CIO, after the national labor federation announced its official support of a single payer health care system. The CNA is one of the largest, militant independent unions in the US and gained the respect of the majority of Californians for leading the fight against Governor Schwarzenegger’s ballot measures in 2005. The move to join the AFL will bring 75,000 members from the CNA/NNOC, most of whom are nurses in California, into the national labor federation. CNA’s executive director Rose Ann DeMoro stressed, “We’re still an independent union… they [meaning the AFL] won’t have anything to do with our contracts.” Instead the AFL-CIO will represent the nurses in lobbying and advocacy positions, just as it represents the American Federation of Teachers, Writers Guild of America, and dozens of other state and national unions.

Visit the CNA’s website at www.calnurses.org