After a long and vicious feud, it seems CNA and SEIU bosses have finally buried the hatchet… in the backs of independent nurses:

Two of the nation’s fastest-growing labor unions — the Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association — ended a bitter yearlong dispute on Wednesday by agreeing to work together to unionize hospital workers and push for universal health coverage.

For the last year, the two unions have viciously denounced each other, with the service employees accusing the nurses of sabotaging efforts to organize 8,300 hospital workers in Ohio, and the nurses’ union accusing S.E.I.U. officials of stalking and harassing its leaders.

“We have buried the hatchet,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

So the SEIU and CNA bosses have tabled their ugly little internecine war to focus on what’s REALLY important to them — corralling more nurses into forced-dues-paying ranks!

Given the circumstances, we’re not too suprised by this touching reconciliation. The heart of the CNA-SEIU feud — CNA criticisms of coercive SEIU organizing tactics — was pretty much a dead letter after CNA operatives were implicated in the exact same practices at Houston and Philadelphia-area hospitals. For those of you who missed it, here’s the Foundation’s video report on coercive CNA organizing abuses in Texas: