Posted on 07/04/2010 10:12:10 AM PDT by SmithL
The California Nurses Association has taken on powerful people before, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators from both major parties, and has scored resounding wins.
In each showdown, the 86,000-person union made full use of its key advantage – the appeal of its members' professions – while pressing hard for policies that benefited nurses.
This election year, the union is putting its powers to the test as it challenges its most well-funded opponent to date, billionaire Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who is wasting no time fighting back.
That the union is leading the anti-Whitman front so far speaks volumes about its winning past and its emergence as one of the top players in California politics. In recent weeks, it has won at least as much attention as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.
The group's increasingly visible activism also has exposed it to criticism that it's straying from its worker advocacy mission to become the Democratic Party's boisterous ground troops.
Its anti-Whitman activity has included disrupting the candidate's campaign events with chanting protesters, banner-trailing planes circling overhead and teacher Elaine Burn acting out sidewalk skits as "Queen Meg," a Whitman parody.
"Nurses in the political context have always been golden," said Democratic strategist Garry South, who negotiated with the union as a top aide to former Gov. Gray Davis. "One of the things that the CNA has to watch is that they don't get so cute or get so over the top that they turn people off."
The union's leaders say they're opposed to Whitman's pledges to streamline business and labor regulations, such as overtime and meal-and-rest break requirements. They also say they don't trust the candidate's recent support for the union's key cause: a state law requiring hospitals to maintain specific nurse-patient ratios.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Selfish Unions—all take and no give. They can push it too far whereas their very own jobs can be forced into elimination as a drastic result.
He is, after all, the father of collective bargaining in California - when it all started downhill.
The nurses union here in MN just had their strike plans fail miserably when thousands of their members said they’d cross the picket line.
Due to the lack of support from the public and their own membership, they had to settle the negotiations with virtually nothing that they wanted and a net loss considering the public now thinks they’re a bunch of out-of-touch, greedy left-wing actvists. Not exactly the image nurses enjoyed before the labor dispute.
It'll be a load all right. But hopefully not a golden motherlode.
Eventually we will have no unions. These battles to end them will be difficult but there isn’t a company or government that can afford 80-100k pensions along with health care.
Unions are the storm troopers of socialism.
Unions because of their size, the money they have, the number of people they can throw into the campaign may win elections, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory.
Governments have gotten too big to continue. They are sucking the life blood (money) out of the economy and the patient is dying.
If I could step outside of this world and watch what was happening it would be an interesting social drama, but at last, I must live in this world and it scares the hell out of me that we have gotten to this point.
Unions came into power because of the excesses of business, it is possible unions may not survive because of their own excesses.
Unions aren’t getting the message: the people are beginning to realize that they are NOT representative of most of their members. So many are FORCED to belong just so they can work. Thank God we live in a right-to-work state. My husband and many of his co-workers fight SEIU and their attempts to unionize the police here. Teachers I talk to don’t WANT to belong to the union and fight them, as well.
This is certain, quite a few are learning that the union does NOTHING for THEM, and that their dues- wrung out of them- are going to pay for politicians and union officials that are completely out-of-step with what they believe.
In this day of the demonRAT majority, the unions are exerting far more power than their shrinking membership should afford them.
God bless Walmart and states like Georgia!
Just the tip of the iceberg. California is “ruled” by a corrupt Democrat Legislature, Public Service Unions, and Unions in general.
Meg Whittman, a Romney clone from Ma., will have no chance in providing the ‘Leadership” she so glowingly ascribes to herself. Meg will be overwhelmed by a constant barrage of “attack ads” from the left, both during the primary election and, if elected, from day 1 of her administration.
Just as Romney did in Ma, Meg’s inclination will then be to “compromise/work with” the Democrats/and their power base, the Unions. BOHICA!
The key to California’s revival lies, not in the Covernor’s Mansion, but in defeating each and every Democrat Senator and Assemblyperson (ahem). Without that seachange in the California political landscape, we will continue to wallow in an emmigrant induced socialist he!!.
Help us out, and recall all those nutty friends and relatives you sent to California in the past 40 years! Take em back and dilute their influence in California.....Oh I forgot you don’t want them either.....sigh!
In the early 1950’s the Democrat Party was almost non-existant in California.....emmigration from the East Coast/New England States, has turned our Conservative Paradise into a Democrat Pig Sty. ( Even our Republican Pols seem more like New England “Repubs” Snowe, and Collins than the old time California Conservatives, like me, other California FReepers, and the owner of this site.......
Rant off!
Nurses - Good!
Unions - Bad!
Unions go when the members refuse to be members any longer. If the members all walk away from their union and tell them to take a hike, what can the unions do? I know one thing, if I have to go to a hospital, I’m inquiring of the staff and if they are union members, they are not to come anywhere near me. I will request movement to a hospital that is not unionized or muslimized.
Another ringing endorsement for Meg Whitman. If the Union is crying, freedom is winning!
Whitman is worthless. Just one more amnesty-loving RINO.
Either way California is bankrupt.
Unions and far too many voters are simply ignoring that fact.
That fact will not be ignored and go away quietly.
The only question is, will the resulting downward spin be somewhat controlled or just a free for all...
Unions are too big to fail. Obama wants to rob the right-to-work states in order to bail out bloated union states like California that are about to collapse.
You aren’t going to fix it in one election. Even Meg is preferable to Moonbeam Brown.
Maybe not. Liberal Republicans have been doing as much damage as Democrats. In some measure that’s because conservatives have been letting Republicans get away with policies that they will oppose when coming from Democrats.
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