RNs Call on Service Employees Union (SEIU) President Stern to Renounce Violence Following Brutal Attack on L...( Targeting Women and Nurses i...),Health

Targeting Women and Nurses in Attack and Stalking at Homes

OAKLAND, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of a brutal attack on a labor conference in Michigan Saturday night by staff of the Service Employees International Union, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee Monday called on SEIU President Andrew Stern to "renounce the use of violence, and stop targeting women, nurses, and working people for threats and harassment."

By their own admission, quoted in an SEIU press release after the event, SEIU said it sent 800 people to the event to confront CNA/NNOC Rose Ann DeMoro, the scheduled banquet speaker that night, and other female CNA/NNOC leaders who were at the conference.

Concurrently, SEIU representatives were engaged in stalking and harassing female CNA/NNOC Board members in their homes and in their nursing departments over the past few days.

"Together these actions reveal an unmistakable pattern of violence and specific targeting of women labor leaders that is reprehensible and should have no place in our labor movement or our country," said DeMoro today. "Stern has an obligation to the labor movement and the world to take a clear stand against such disgraceful behavior."

Labor Notes, an independent magazine, also issued a call to Stern and SEIU to "repudiate" the use of violence following the shocking events of Saturday night when purple-clad SEIU staff stormed the Labor Notes conference banquet, crashing through the doors, and assaulting union members in their way in an effort to rush the stage.

According to Labor Notes, "a recently retired member of United Auto Workers Local 235, Dianne Feeley, suffered a head wound after being knocked to the ground by SEIU International staff and local members. Other conference-goers -- members of the Teamsters, UAW, UNITE HERE, International Longshoremen's Association, and SEIU itself -- were punched, kicked, shoved, and pushed
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