Ludlow

tntrn, most responsible people want to pay their way. You have safe water to drink, electricity that comes into your house, roads that get you from your home to work and play, a safe community to live in protected by police and fire fighters. Every working person pays payroll tax; every person who purchases almost anything pays a sales tax. Gasoline is taxed to keep the roads in working order. People with cell phones pay taxes for use of the public air waves. If you fly you pay a tax that pays for air traffic control--something no one flying would want to be without. We pay property tax so that our kids can have schools in which they can get an education. Taxes make a civilized society possible. For me it is appalling that 49% of Americans make so little that they don't meet the requirements on the tax scale to pay income tax---if indeed that is the case. Getting back to the cadillac tax it initially was in John McCain's platform. Originally Obama opposed it but in his efforts to reach across the isle and be bipartisan he agreed to it. Obama: McCain Wants to Tax Your Health Insurance Originally the House passed the bill without a cadillac tax and had other funding mechanisms. But the Senate with Democrat Max Baucus and Republican Charles Grassley proposing it, included it in the final bill. It seems to spring out of the false philosophy that people with plush plans use the health care system unnecessarily. Oh, yeah, sure give me another colonoscopy. Oh and throw in some chemo too---my plan covers it all! In reality Americans go to the doctor less often and spend fewer days in the hospital than many other 1st world countries. But we are still paying twice as much. We are truly getting gipped.

tntrn, On second look I see you might be talking about the tax on insurance plans if they cost more than $10,200/yr per single or 27,500/yr per family. I agree there, that sucks and is a stupid way to get revenue. It was a concession to republicans. Many of the stupid things in the bill were concessions trying to get republican votes for the bill. The concessions were added in but not one republican voted for the bill.

tntrn, what are the 'higher taxes' you're refering to? If you have insurance and like it you can keep it. If you refuse to get insurance, you will be fined. The fine was described by Justice John Roberts as a tax. Most taxes are added to things we buy: gasoline, TVs, property. This is a tax or fine if we don't do someting: get health insurance. So I imagine those who can afford it will, as a matter of personal responsibility, buy it. Those who can't afford it will receive subsidies. Those who won't will be taxed/fined (and the fine is not that much and not much happens to you if you don't ever pay it--unless congress changes that part of the law).

I think National Nurses United is a great idea! Nurses across the country see how smart it is to have nurse to patient ratios that are based on nursing judgement not the hospital's bottom line. I work in CA and have had so many travelers tell me that they won't go back to 8 or more to 1 on the floors or 4 or more to 1 on step down or 3 to 1 in the ICU. They get that safe staffing saves lives and saves our sanity and RN licenses. Pushing for proper nurse to patient ratios is just one thing NNU does. And you can see that they have been successful by looking at the contract the HCA Florida RNs just got.

Thanks for this clear explanation of where we're at in the health care coverage world. The sooner we get to Medicare for All the happier I'll be.

Reality is that in order to push for laws that prohibit bad practices, you have to be organized and united; like a union. I know people who say, "I have my voice, one voice. I speak out and get what I need. I don't want and don't need a union like CNA/NNOC." But one voice didn't push the governor to sign the safe staffing ratios law in California or the legislature into enact it. One voice didn't get nurses who report illegal and unsafe activities of corporations who harm patients whistleblower legal protection. One voice didn't get pay that allowed nurses to be able to afford a home, send their kids to college, have decent insurance and retire with dignity because they have valuable pensions. One voice didn't get overtime pay or the 40 hour work week. Unions did.

In the case of striking for better, safer patient care, when you cross the picket line you make the statement that you are endorsing the hospital's unsafe staffing and unsafe patient conditions. Not a good place to be for a patient advocate.

we now face national hospital chains and multinational corporations. we still need the strength of the many to protect standards.

I appreciate your history and struggle, Lynnie. Thanks for putting it out there. I would just like to remind us all that we have overtime pay and vacation pay and the concept of a weekend and health insurance benefits and retirement benefits and no child laboring in coal mines and scores of other taken-for-granted improvements in life because of unions. Workers united can make tremendous valuable gains for themselves as a group and for their professions that a single worker is just not able to do. As nurses we don't do our work of healing and caring single-handedly by ourselves. Though nothing is perfect, I find it far better being in a union having fellow nurses by my side helping me solve my institutional patient care problems. I'm glad to not be going it alone.

Dragging out and delaying a first contract is bad faith bargaining. It's illegal. Hospitals do it all the time. In doing so they are just showing their true colors. They are not on our side or even on the side of our patients. They are on their share holders side, servants of the almighty dollar. Our duty is to assure safe, therapeutic care. We are in 2 totally different universes.

In the ICU we've had the mandated ratios of at least 2 patients:1nurse since the 1970s in California. Yet I have often just had one patient and at times I have cared for one patient who needed 2 nurses. Ratios are the floor and we staff richer if patients need it. But this is our fight as nurses. Administrations will want the fewest nurses possible. We have to advocate for our patients and tell administration--hey these patients require more time to get the care they deserve so let's get another nurse in here! Before the union it was "Do the best you can" or "Last shift's nurses did it, why can't you?" and all manner of like things. With the union we have ways of pushing back and getting extra nurses.

Nothing in the California ratios is meant to limit it to the specified number, richer staffing is meant to happen if the patient's care needs dictate it. Now, say, if in the ICU the ratios varied by one patient, that would be a big deal. And a big problem.

More unions = safer working conditions and safer patients. The Massey mine disaster and the BP oil vulcano-spewing-oil-into-the-Gulf-of-Mexico disaster (both needlessly killing workers) are the results of fewer workers having the power that a union would have given them to keep their work environments as safe as possible. Deregulation and union busting paved the way to such disasters. Union RNs would all much rather that the hospital move to keep patients safe like for instance by staffing to acuity within the framework of the California ratios AT ALL TIMES on their own or even when we are sitting at the bargaining table, but if we have to strike to so move them we will.

That's absolutely fabulous!

I don't EVER want to work at a non-union hospital again. Glad for my contract. Glad for my protections. Glad for my benefits and pay.

Gomberg, CEO of Temple said What??? "She says the hospital's policy is only that employees not on strike can't join the nurses' picket line." How can a hospital CEO or policy tell me that I can't join in with a picket line on my own time???? That is ridiculous! Completely ridiculous! They truly must think we are their slaves.

No, political policies like NAFTA drove manufacturing jobs from this country. In 2002 I was working in a Tenet, non-union hospital. A union hospital in our county got a step pay system through bargaining instead of merit pay. Nurses with 20 and 30 years in the system got huge pay increases to bring them up to where they should have been (imagine starting as an RN for $6/ hr and then getting 3% raise every year. New grads were making more than their preceptors. It was crazy.) Well, MY HOSPITAL, my non union also readjusted its senior nurses wages and we all got raises as well. Union improvements lift all. Without them it's just a race to the bottom.

I used to work at a hospital that had a neurosurgeon that performed unnecessary surgeries and at times was too tired to stay awake during surgery. Nurses tried to tell administration that he was unsafe, but administration didn't listen. The hospital ended up on the front page of the Orange County Register (https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/lawsuits-charge-doctor-36991.html). This story was one in a string of stories about incompetency and greed in the Tenet Healthcare system that led to the fall of Tenet's credibility as well as its stock prices. Today, years later, Tenet's stock barely hits $6 or $7/share when before the scandals it traded in the $50s. We point out problems because we want our patients to be safe. We want to be safe as well. When our warnings fall on deaf ears, as is often the case when the bottom line gets in the way, we still are obligated to protect our patients. Being able to tell DHS and state authorities about what is going on without fear of reprisal is essential. I admire and totally support the Temple nurses and other workers who have placed patient safety as sacrosanct. And are not willing to be bullied into relinquishing this most important duty to their patients by the Temple administration. The Temple administrators on the other hand should be ashamed of themselves for wasting their funds on scabs instead of settling this. Thank you Temple RNs!

True, but my experience is that with a strong union behind you like the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee you have more power to make the difference.

Wow, just like the current Republican administration, when you don't have a legitimate argument you resort to fear. As long as you don't corner me in the lady's bathroom, I think we're all independent enough to make up our own minds to join a union or not. Give Democracy a chance, Sherwood, you might like it. I don't think the Employee Free Choice Act will make it past Bush without a veto proof majority, but it will become law next year.

Support the Employee Free Choice Act!

I vote always and ever to unionize.

RNs want to do what is best for their patients. CNA/NNOC helps give you support and 'has your back' so that you can turn the tide when the corporation or the government wants to put profits or power above patient care, safety and patient interests. Hooray for CNA and NNOC! Any group of nurses that wants to invite that kind of power and organization of forces into their work place is not being raided; they are being wise.

I transferred from a mostly non-unionized area of California (Orange County) to a high density area (San Francisco where 80% of the hospitals are unionized) and now make 50% more (by the way the cost of living difference between the 2 areas is 15%). I too gladly pay every penny of my CNA dues. In addition to better wages and working conditions I also get to be part of a movement that worked for RN to patient ratios, whistle-blower protection by law for nurses who expose unsafe conditions in their work place, and is now out in front working for Health Care for All in America--Single Payer, publicly funded privately delivered, everybody in--nobody out health care (Sheila Kuehl's SB 840 bill in California and John Conyers' bill HR 676.) If you feel like singing for Universal Health Care--Single Payer style (more CARE not more Insurance Coverage) go here: http://web.mac.com/suescannon/Site/Blog/Entries/2008/5/10_We_Want_Guaranteed_Health_Care.html

It is true that the author of the mentioned article is rabidly anti-union, has actively worked with union-busting groups to thwart organizing, and so is tainted no matter her claim to give you both sides. As you said, it is more about why not to unionize. She and her anti union colleagues are terrified that once the Free Choice Act becomes law and you can unionize your workplace by card check, nurses will join CNA/NNOC in large numbers. In that world, where unions are more easily joined, (since nurses will get to freely choose and not be dragged through anti-union campaigns that scare them away from their original choice to join), the Burke Group and other union-busting multi-million dollar corporations won't be able to be so free with their more limited dollars and offers of independent contractor work for the author and her associates.