Media Advisory for December 10               

Contact:  Carol Feuss
Michigan Nurses Association
517/230-4086
                                                                                    
Detroit Nurses Rally on Int’l Human Rights Day to Expose Violations

Nurses Point Finger at Detroit Medical Center, Weak U.S. Labor Laws

On December 10th at 5 p.m. over a hundred nurses, union, religious, and elected leaders, will rally in Detroit on International Human Rights Day to expose workers’ rights violations right here at home. They will charge that employers like the Detroit Medical Center – the largest employer in the city of Detroit – routinely violate workers’ basic human right to freedom of association, and that U.S. labor law is helpless to stop them.

“We want to form a union because union membership provides a voice on the job and the protections needed to be an effective patient advocate. Belonging to a union will help us  build a better life for ourselves and our families,” said Ceferina Sharpe a nurse from Harper Hutzel Hospital.  “This is America, and our basic rights should count for more, not less!”

According to charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board by the Michigan Nurses Association, the Detroit Medical Center illegally interrogated nurses about supporting the union, spied on nurses, and threatened to discipline nurses for distributing union literature in order to stop the nurses from forming a union.

The right to form a union is one of the basic human rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by Eleanor Roosevelt and representatives of four-fifths of United Nations member countries on Dec. 10, 1948.

“Workers in the U.S. have fewer rights than workers in any other industrialized country.  We need the Employee Free Choice Act to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life,” said Saundra Williams, president of the Detroit Metropolitan Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.  

Who	DMC Nurses and community supporters, Saundra Williams, president of the Detroit Metropolitan CLC; State Senator Martha Scott; and Father John Rausch, Commission on Peace and Justice of the Catholic Diocese
What	Rally in Support of Detroit Medical Center Nurses
When	Monday, December 10th,  5 p.m.
Where	Harper Hutzel Hospital,  3900 John R; Detroit, MI

The Detroit Dec. 10, 2007, event is happening in conjunction with a global organizing forum in Washington, DC. The forum will bring together hundreds of global leaders in an unprecedented gathering to help workers build power in a global economy.

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The Michigan Nurses Association is the largest, most effective union for RNs in Michigan. As the voice of all registered nurses in Michigan, MNA advocates for nurses and their patients at the State Capitol, in the community and at the bargaining table.  MNA is a constituent member of the United American Nurses and the American Nurses Association and an affiliate of the AFL-CIO.

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