CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

A California nurses union will join with two others across the country to create what they say will be the nation’s largest registered nurses union.

The new group, the United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee, will merge United American Nurses, the Massachusetts Nurses Assn. and California Nurses Assn./National Nurses Organizing Committee, which together represent 150,000 nurses.

Rose Ann DeMoro, president of the 85,000-member California Nurses Assn., said the move is meant to capitalize on labor’s longed-for passage of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which would revamp labor laws to make union membership easier.

-- Evelyn Larrubia