A small band of Pride at Work (LGBT union folks) brought their coffee to the picket line early this morning in support of California Nurses Association (CNA) members on a 10 day strike against Sutter Health hospitals. The strike at St. Luke's in the San Francisco Mission District has strong neighborhood support because Sutter (in its guise as California Pacific Medical Center) is trying to dump the money-losing indigent care the historic hospital provides. The health conglomerate wants to use the facility for profit making services only and push patients to its hospitals far on the other side of the city.
CNA charges that Sutter's plans amount to "medical redlining." Closing St. Luke's would leave the poorer, blacker and browner south side of San Francisco with no hospital but the overcrowded county general facility. More here.
With the Pride at Work folks out front, St. Luke's nurses picketed outside the emergency entrance where staff come in.
As part of my ongoing study of what various activist undertakings choose to feed their volunteers, I noticed that, being a union event, there were indeed donuts -- but also cold Safeway croissants.
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