And the hits just keep on coming ...
According to the Sacramento Bee, Gov. Schwarzenegger had this to say about protesting nurses in California:
"They are becoming now more and more part of the set dressing," he said in an interview this week. "It's kind of like the extras when you do a movie and you need extras in the background. That's what they've become. That's fine with me."
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politi...13318409c.html
Here's the entire article:
Members of the California Nurses Association stood up as Schwarzenegger was speaking at the Sheraton Grand on Thursday and unfurled a banner reading, "Stop the Power Grab."
A week earlier, they protested as the Republican governor and a group of Hollywood stars arrived for a Sacramento movie premiere. The California Highway Patrol pulled one nurse out of the theater audience for questioning after spotting her hospital uniform.
The CNA plans to fly an anti-Schwar-zenegger banner over the Oscar ceremonies in Hollywood on Sunday night.
Officials of the state's largest nurses union say their concern is patient safety: They want the governor to stop blocking new regulations that would boost the number of nurses hospitals are required to have on duty.
Largely due to the sponsorship of the CNA, California last year became the first state in the nation to institute mandatory nurse-patient ratios for hospitals. Until Schwarzenegger stepped in, the allowable ratio of patients to nurses was scheduled to decrease in January. The plan would have increased the mandatory number of nurses since each nurse would be handling fewer patients.
But critics of the registered nurses union - namely, hospitals - say the group's aggressive tactics are more suited to the Teamsters than to caregivers. And they charge that the CNA is using the publicity as part of a national organizing drive.
"What's important is that people understand their agenda," said Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association. "Their vitriolic campaigning citing what are honestly minor changes to the ratios is not about their so-called concern about patients. It is about their efforts to make themselves a national labor union."
Schwarzenegger himself is dismissive of the protesters who are becoming a regular part of his political road show.
"They are becoming now more and more part of the set dressing," he said in an interview this week. "It's kind of like the extras when you do a movie and you need extras in the background. That's what they've become. That's fine with me."
Officials at the CNA see the complaints about their tactics as pure sexism.
"If you know anything about nurses at the bedside, they are extremely vocal in making sure they get the staffing they need," said Deborah Burger, a nurse who is president of the CNA. "They have to go up against sometimes very hostile hospital administrators and doctors. It only seems hostile or assertive because I think there's a bit of a gender bias. ... It's really trying to say women are not acting as they are supposed to."...
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