Proposed ruling favors union nurses

By Kathy Robertson
Sacramento Business Journal
April 24, 2008

In what could become a victory for organized labor withrepercussions for all public employees in California, the California Nurses Association is poised to win the next round in a lengthy legal fight over the right to strike aainst University of California medical campuses and to bargain over staffing and other patient care issues.

The state Public Employee Relations Board issued a proposed decision April 18 that would hold that unfair-labor-practices strikes by public employees are permitted under state law.

The proposed ruling also found that UC violated the law by refusing to bargain over the union's staffing proposal and refusing to provide information to nurses about university patient classification systems used to determine staffing.