The largest hospital and healthcare workers union in the western US will begin a massive, coordinated campaign to improve the rights of healthcare workers across the country to stand up for better patient care and higher standards.  Courage Campaign’s Elliott Petty will be at the strategy session in Oakland, covering the event LIVE on CourageCampaign.org.

The 140,000-member SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West is sending a delegation to California which will begin work on the historic bargaining campaign.

Join me after the jump for the full text of a SEIU-UHW press release.

SEIU-UHW For Immediate Release:

WORKERS PREPARE FOR LARGEST COORDINATED HEALTHCARE BARGAINING CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY.

Event Bringing Together Caregivers from Several States to be Covered by Blogger

OAKLAND – A delegation of 700 healthcare workers from six states will gather in Oakland on Saturday to plan for a coordinated bargaining campaign in 2008, when contracts at more than 200 hospitals and nursing homes will expire, creating an opportunity for caregivers to achieve unprecedented victories for working people across the United States.

The convention in California, to be hosted by SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, represents the first time that healthcare workers will coordinate their bargaining campaigns on such a massive scale. Caregivers from California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota and Connecticut will participate in the event.

“This meeting represents an unprecedented opportunity for healthcare workers from around the country to work together for improved standards such as the right to stand up for our patients and residents,” said Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU UHW. “Healthcare workers do the same work everywhere in the country, and it only makes sense that we come together to work toward our common goal.”

Healthcare workers at several SEIU local unions plan to coordinate their bargaining campaigns next year, in order to maximize their ability to improve quality care for their patients, raise industry standards and win a voice on the job. More than 150,000 caregivers will benefit from this coordination by achieving the ability to advocate for improved patient care through their union.

Adding a unique twist to the proceedings will be the presence of netroots blogger Elliott Petty of the progressive online California group Courage Campaign, who plans to post live updates to his site, http://couragecampai… as the meeting progresses through the day. He will also post at MyDD and Open Left, two major national political blogs.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to observe, participate, and interact with UHW’s members at this meeting,” Petty said. “The best way to build bridges between labor and the online communities is to engage in actions with each other. Progressives win when we are united, which this effort will help us to be.”

Petty’s participation is an outgrowth of UHW’s involvement with the YearlyKos convention earlier this month, in which UHW leaders met with numerous members of the progressive blogosphere to discuss ways that their online activism can dovetail with the grassroots worker and political organizing of labor unions. The union plans to hold a retreat for progressive bloggers in the fall.

“Our values of member democracy, openness, and dialogue and debate are mirrored by those of the netroots community,” Rosselli said. “We look forward to continuing to work with online activists who share our goals and values.”

Rosselli and several healthcare workers will be available for interview throughout the week and on Saturday.

The 140,000-member SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West is the largest hospital and healthcare union in the western United States and represents every type of healthcare worker, including nurses, professional, technical and service classifications. Our mission is to achieve high-quality healthcare for all.

From the Courage Campaign
I thought I was doing a pretty good job of energy conservation.  I always turn off the lights when I leave the room, and I use those compact florescent bulbs to replace the inefficient incandescents when they burn out.  I’ve got a pretty good track record when it comes to turning off the TV.  I rarely get caught accidentally leaving the refrigerator door open.  And I’m very proud to say that my fan even has a thermostat.But this blogging business can really run up the electric bill!  I’ve got a power-intensive workstation.  My computer is nearly always on, because I hate waiting for it to boot up.  Recently, I got a second monitor — trust me, the benefits to having more than one monitor (especially if you’re a writer) are amazing, but I’m sucking down twice as much electricity!  I’ve got a speaker system with a 80 watt subwoofer.  Add a couple of external hard disks… yeah, I’m a bona fide energy hog.

What’s worse is that I’m apparently not alone.  A new study shows that when considering production, use, and disposal, annually computers put as much climate-change-causing CO₂ into the atmosphere as airlines.  You read that right — computing worldwide hurts the atmosphere as much as the aviation industry.

Sounds like a huge crisis to me, and we as bloggers (and blog reading computer users) need to be on top of this. 

Google announced this week that they’re joining with heavyweight hardware and software manufacturers like Dell, Lenovo, Intel, and Microsoft to create the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.  They’ve set an ambitious goal of reducing computer power consumption by 50% by 2010.  We’ll all need to pitch in, and it’s really not that hard to tweak your system to make it more power efficient.

For one, if you still use a “screen saver,” you know, the kind that puts a fancy moving picture on your display after you haven’t used your computer in a while, turn that thing off!  It can actually waste power because your display should just turn off when not in use.  You can also set your computer to automatically go into “sleep” or “standby” mode after you’ve left it alone for, say, 15 or 20 minutes.  I’ve got mine set to a very wasteful 60 minutes before it goes into “sleep” and another 90 minutes before it goes into “hibernate” (which provides an even greater power savings than sleep mode).  I’m going to change those right now.

If you’re not sure how to set your computer to a more power-conscious mode, this great article from the NY Times explains just a few simple tweaks every computer user should make to cut down on energy use.

From the Courage Campaign

California’s prisons are in a serious crisis.  California’s prisons are massively overcrowded, and more people are being sent there than ever before.  The conditions inside the prisons have deteriorated to the point that the health care system is already under the control of a federal court (three inmates died just this last December due to poor health care).  The courts have threatened to take over the rest of the system if urgent reforms are not implemented.  As Total Recall (the Courage Campaign governor watch) has noted, prison reform was a key part of Governor Schwarzenegger’s campaign promises both in the 2003 recall election and his 2006 reelection.  But Schwarzenegger took almost no action to fix our prisons in his first term as Governor, and he didn’t release a detailed plan to fix the problem until after his reelection, in December 2006.  Schwarzenegger’s first major prison bill has finally been signed, just this month.

More Prisons, And Billions More For Prisons

Nearly every expert agrees that sentencing reform – stopping the huge increases in the prison population – is desperately needed in California.  For Governor Schwarzenegger to fulfill his promise to fix our correctional system, he needs to provide bold leadership and resist the calls for “tough on crime.”  We simply cannot afford to send so many people to prison, and there’s no evidence that locking up 170,000 people (and the number keeps getting higher) has made us any safer.

Rather than enact bold reforms, on May 3, 2007, Schwarzenegger successfully pushed through a plan to build tens of thousands of new prison cells, which together with a few new treatment programs will rack up a cost of some 7.4 Billion Dollars.  Despite the rejection of voters, again and again, for bond dollars to build new prisons, the plan hailed as a success by Schwarzenegger spends more than 6 Billion just on construction alone — operating cost estimates will come later.  Schwarzenegger did not do what almost every expert on prisons has said he must do: institute immediate reform of the sentencing system to stop sending so many people to prison.  The 7.4 Billion Dollar plan does nothing to relieve the crisis in the immediate term.  Rather than a permanent fix to the broken system, this plan is a 7.4 Billion Dollar bandage.  Did I mention that the cost of this plan is 7.4 Billion Dollars?

Health Care for Inmates: Still Cruel and Unusual

The construction of new prisons is just the first part of the massive cost that we will have to pay to maintain a prison system housing 200,000 human beings.  Last week, the person appointed to fix the health care system in the prisons released his proposal to bring the system out of “cruel and unusual” territory.  The proposal had no price tag, but experts say it will take nearly 20 years and billions of dollars to fully implement.

Death Chamber Controversy

Adding a new dimension to Schwarzenegger’s prison failures is the recent controversy over a secret new death chamber at San Quentin prison.  Governor Schwarzenegger and his staff apparently knew of the plan to build this new chamber well before it was made public — but Schwarzenegger made statements to the contrary.  John Myers has an excellent description of the unfolding controversy here.

Total Recall

This series is dedicated to keeping you informed of how well Schwarzenegger’s actions live up to his promises.  We’ll keep you updated on developments as they happen.

(a perspective we didn’t focus nearly enough on, thanks, Erik – promoted by Todd Beeton)

From The Courage Campaign

For me, a member of UAW Local 2865, one of the highlights of the convention was the strong presence of the labor movement in San Diego.  The only caucus bigger than the vibrant and exciting Progressive caucus was the Labor Caucus, and I'm proud to count myself as part of both caucuses.

It's almost cliché by now to blog about the importance of organized labor in the progressive movement.  Every progressive who's walked a precinct or worked a phone bank has done this important grassroots organizing alongside union members.  In fact, every time I've worked a phone bank for progressive issue campaigns or for progressive candidates, I've done it using telephones at the offices of a local union.  There are very few organizations that have the ability to bring together American suburbanites, urbanites, and rural voters into a place where they hear about and work hard on issues like education, health care, stopping the war, and all the other progressive priorities that define us.  Labor unions do this, and they do it well. 

The Labor Caucus at the 2007 California Democratic Party Convention was an exciting place to be.  Teachers (like me), store clerks, auto parts manufacturers – people from all over the state working in all kinds of jobs were in the room to hear detailed speeches about universal health care, the looming grocery strike, teacher layoffs, the need to protect workers at enormously profitable casinos, and the need to end the war.

My favorite moment came when the chair, Jim Gordon, recognized State Senator Jenny Oropeza, who was sitting on the right side of the room.  Oroteza waved to the crowd as we applauded her (just like we had for many, many other electeds who were in the room).  Then Jim Gordon suddenly intoned, "And with recognition comes accountability!  Senator Oroteza is one of the Senators who voted against worker protections in the compact."  Oroteza's smile turned into a frown as the crowd jeered and hissed.  She left a short time later.

Labor's strengths in the Democratic party were on full display in San Diego.  Not only did the California Teachers Association serve as the official host of the convention, but union members used their collective muscle to help get important resolutions passed.  I'm looking forward to the 2008 convention, where hopefully there will be even more people who attend both the progressive and labor caucus meetings.  We've got a lot in common, and we need one another if we want to succeed.

(Another installment of the Total Recall series. Good work Erik. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

By Erik Love – From The Courage Campaign 

The first installment of Total Recall, the Courage Campaign Governor Watch, focused on perhaps the most pressing issue facing California — health care.  The objective of Total Recall is simple: see whether the Governor fulfills his campaign promises.  Yesterday's LA Times had on its front page a story about early details of Governor Schwarzenegger's latest plan for providing insurance to some of the 6.5 million people in our state without any health coverage.  The plan would provide coverage to nearly all of the children living in California — an important achievement to be sure.  But the Governor's proposal is most surprising because it would include undocumented children in its coverage — a proposal which seems to be at odds with Schwarzenegger's conservative base.  While an official announcement of the Governor's plan will appear next week, it appears that the administration has allowed a trial balloon to hit the papers to gauge reaction to this most controversial aspect of his proposal.

If the Governor's plan remains true to the details seen in yesterday's newspaper article, then progressives will find much to like.  Insuring California's children would be an important, big step forward.  Still, it's important to remember that such a plan would only be the beginning.  Schwarzenegger promised to extend health insurance to as many Californians as possible.  Schwarzenegger's plan to insure children would affect about 760,000 people — still leaving about 6 million Californians with no health insurance.  The pressure would still be on the Governor to finish the job.

Moreover, while the Governor would be lauded for including all children in California in his plan, it will be difficult to forget Schwarzenegger's previous anti-immigration statements, including his now infamous "Close the Border!" speeches.  And, it's important not to forget that the Governor had an excellent, financially sound plan for universal health care on his desk as recently as August 2006.  Despite his insistence that insuring Californians is a priority, Schwarzenegger vetoed that plan because it wasn't politically advantageous for him during his reelection campaign.

Now that health care appears politically advantageous, Schwarzenegger is ready for a bold proposal.  This is good for the hundreds of thousands of children in need of health insurance, unquestionably.  But Schwarzenegger still has a long way to go to prove that he's more than a political opportunist on this issue.  Total Recall will be there when the Governor's health care plan is officially unveiled next week.