Nurses endorse Nader for President

By Marc Sandalow

Washington, DC, June 15— California’s largest organization of nurses endorsed Ralph Nader for president yesterday, becoming the first influential group to back the consumer advocate’s dark horse campaign.

The California Nurses Association (CNA), which has a long history of endorsing Democratic candidates, praised Nader —who is running as a member of the Green Party— for his support of patients’ rights and universal health care.

“Nurses love Ralph,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA, which has 31,000 members in over 100 hospital and health agencies throughout the state.

The endorsement underscores the potential for Nader to chip away at support for Vice President Al Gore, who has alienated some core Democratic voters —particularly union members and liberals— with his enthusiasm for free trade and his incremental approach to expanding health care.

“On the central issue of corporate power,” Nader said in an interview, “the only difference between Gore and Bush is the velocity with which their foreheads hit the floor when corporations knock on their door.”

He accused both of “sucking up to Silicon Valley,” and said they are “competing for the presidency to see who will take the marching orders from their corporate paymasters.

“If he doesn’t want to compete on the agenda that I’m running on,” Nader added, “he has to incur the consequences.”

The nurses’ endorsement was announced yesterday in Washington before a banner that read, “Rns for R.N. — Nader for President.”

Nader has proposed a nationalized health care plan similar to that which now exists in Canada, in which the federal government would make sure that identical benefits were available to rich and the poor.

The program would be financed through a combination of payroll taxes, a tax on stock transactions and a reduction in the health bureaucracy.

“At a time when nearly 45 million Americans are uninsured, Ralph Nader is the only candidate for president to stand for universal health care, including a national health insurance plan that guarantees access to full health care services for every man, woman and child,” said CNA president Kay McVay.

Nader’s candidacy has drawn support from some big name entertainers —including Paul Newman, Jackson Brown, Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls— but the CNA endorsement is his first from an independent organization, his campaign said.

UFCW: layoffs approach ‘critical mass’ at Wal-Mart

Statement of United Food and Commercial Workers Union

Washington, DC, June 16— Wal-Mart seems to be rolling back more than just prices lately. Employees across the country are saying that the company is rolling back its workforce with out-of-the-ordinary layoffs in its retail and wholesale club stores, as well as cutting the hours of thousands more.

One worker reports that one of the company’s super-centers, plagued by customer complaints about long checkout lines, laid off 14 cashiers recently hired to alleviate the problem.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) has been told of the layoffs and cutbacks from employees in all geographic regions and from all divisions of the company.

Employees are telling the UFCW that this sudden move by the giant retailer is creating widespread fear and panic among Wal-Mart workers.

“The Internet is crackling with angry and concerned messages from Wal-Mart workers. We’re certainly getting numerous inquiries on the UFCW’s Web sites” said Michael Leonard, a vice president of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union and director of strategic programs.

“The fact that Wal-Mart has not publicly released details of the widespread layoffs and cutbacks is feeding employee resentment and concern,” Leonard continued. “Wal-Mart routinely sends employees home early if a store’s sales are not meeting arbitrary projections, but the current round of layoffs and hours reductions appear far more widespread than isolated sales problems in individual stores or geographic areas.”

The layoffs and cutbacks followed recent news reports of sluggish June retail sales, “but that explanation doesn’t wash with employees whose hours are already cut even though the stores are busy,” Leonard, a 36-year veteran of the retail industry, claimed.

“Bentonville is so driven by the demands of Wall Street that they’ve lost sight of consumer and employee satisfaction,” the union organizer added. “The excessive demands on employees to do more to cover for laid-off co-workers and the added pressure brought by surly customers frustrated with protracted delays in check-out lines are reaching a critical mass. It is only a matter of time before it explodes into a wildfire of union activity.”

Union officials report receiving the following anecdotes from employees:
1. A South Carolina store laid off 52 employees, and another store rehired fired cashiers to save training costs after laying off higher-paid cashiers.
2. Rather than following the traditional retail practice of allowing normal attrition to take care of layoffs, many stores are using the layoffs as an opportunity to trim payrolls by laying off higher-paid employees while still hiring entry-level replacements.
3. Full-time employees having their hours cut to 20 and part-timers reduced to one day a week. Employees being asked to “volunteer” to get off early; or to “sacrifice” to keep the stock price from dropping. Others are being told the cutbacks are due to Kmart “rebounding instead of dying.”

“Wal-Mart claims it is ‘pro-associate,’ as it calls its employees, but this round of layoffs and cutbacks is only proving to the workers that the so-called Open Door Policy is only a buzz word since management refuses to level with its ‘associates’ about what is happening,” Leonard added. “The employees can’t talk with management about this, so they are coming to the union in droves.”

Source: United Food and Commercial Workers:
www.ufcw.org