Today the Executive Board of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor granted a strike sanction against Saint John’s Health Center.

Union nurses, men and women, will picket St. John’s from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on June 13, with a rally at noon

According to Joe Newlin, California Nurses Asociation organizer, CNA assured St. Johns CEO Lourdes (Lou) Lazatin’s negotiators that the nurses “held out hope for our bargaining session on Tuesday June 5, and we would only go public with the news as a last resort, if we were unable to make reasonable movement at the table. But she had no intention of negotiating, apparently, and we were shocked and disappointed when Lazatin’s negotiating team simply read a prepared statement, refused to negotiate at all, and then walked out on us.

“Yesterday, Lazatin announced that she would punish striking RNs with a four-day lockout. Today, managers are illegally threatening and intimidating RNs who plan to strike, and CNA has filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against Saint John’s for illegal retaliation.”

Saint John’s union-busting tactics were rebuked twice last year: first by the nurses, who voted by a landslide for union representation, and then by the National Labor Relations Board, which ruled that Saint John’s violated nurses’ rights by censoring ribbons asking for safe patient care and by banning pro-union RNs from the hospital on non-work time.

More recently, Saint John’s entered into a settlement agreement with the NLRB to remedy ”Unfair Labor Practices,” including refusing to allow RNs to be represented by their union in disciplinary processes, and refusing to provide documents requested by the union in order to represent nurses.

Still, Newlin reports, “Lazatin’s attack on nurses continues. The nurses didn’t ask for that fight, but they intend to win it.”