The California Nurses Association (CNA) held a press conference Thursday, August 19th accusing Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), which operates St. Luke's Hospital, of discriminating against Filipino nurses. The union filed a class action grievance on behalf of Filipino applicants denied jobs at the hospital and, along with Filipino community groups, filed a complaint asking the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to investigate the discrimination claims.

At the press conference, the union provided sworn declarations made by three former managers at CPMC. The declarations claimed that the hospital had instituted a policy against hiring Filipino and foreign-graduate nurses. One former manager reported that a CPMC executive repeatedly instructed him not to hire Filipinos, telling him, "The Filipinos are always related, or know each other and that's not good. You're not to hire them."

Union and community leaders suggested that the decline in the hiring of Filipino registered nurses is connected to their activism. The union presented data showing that Filipinos made up 66 percent of the nurses at St. Luke's when CPMC took over the hospital in 2007. But beginning in 2008, after nurses, including many Filipinos, successfully campaigned against CPMC's planned closure of St. Luke's, the number of Filipino new hires dropped to 10 percent.

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