A LITTLE REVOLUTION
Nurses statewide join teachers and public employees in open street rebellion against Schwarzenegger
By Annette Stark
Everywhere Arnold Schwarzenegger goes these days, he's dogged by the irate California nurses union. Most of the time, that takes them to fundraisers. "We have a limited amount of money to fight this PR war with the governor," says California Nurses Association (CNA) President Deborah Burger, RN. "So we will continue to protest outside his fundraisers."
The union has posted a roster of articles about Schwarzenegger's corporate donations - the real "special interests" - on its website, along with a copy of a party invitation courtesy of the L.A. Times. Billed as "An Evening with Governor Schwarzenegger," the bash offers a long list of available perks, including a table seat with the governor and four photos ("two guests per photo") for $100,000. For $50,000, you get two seats at the governor's table and three photos.
The now-famous nurses' rebellion against the governor is actually only six months old. It began to take shape in November 2004 when Schwarzenegger issued a stop on a 1999 law signed by then-Governor Gray Davis that established a one-to-five nurse-to-patient ratio in California. The law was scheduled to go into effect in January 2005, but the governor issued an emergency order to block it and subsequently took the matter to court. The nurses won the first round in March, when the state Superior Court upheld the legislation.
According to the union, the law is critical to providing adequate patient care and also to encourage more young people to enter the nursing field. Burger says that the union explained to the Department of Health Services - and they agreed - that fulltime nurses were so overworked that many underemployed nurses chose to work part-time. "We said as soon as the ratios went into effect there would be more nurses willing to work."
The governor, however, has sided with the health care industry, which says that the supposed nursing shortage in California will make it difficult for many hospitals (especially those in rural areas) to hire enough staff to comply with the law. "We are the first in the nation to have staffing ratios. If we push too hard we will be a failed state," says Schwarzenegger spokesperson Julie Soderlund. "The state is facing a 14,000 nurse shortage. I think the governor has been very clear about solving this shortage. His priority is patient care."
"They try to argue that there's a nursing shortage, but the nursing registries have nurses," Burger says. "And hospitals like Kaiser already started hiring staff back in September in anticipation of January 2005. As soon as Arnold stepped in with that emergency regulation, some hospitals stopped."
But some headhunters argue that the shortage is real. At Preferred Healthcare Registry in San Diego, business manager Rebecca Viada says: "We aren't making nursing an attractive enough field. So, there are not enough nurses. Period. There aren't even enough people signing up in school."
Viada recruits nurses from around the world, sometimes spending as much as $5,000 getting a nurse from abroad settled in California, only to find that some of them will "go into culture shock." She believes that the ratio is "a great idea," but wonders how the state will find the resources to meet it. "We can't bring them in fast enough. And when they come from other countries the question is: are they qualified enough?"
Still, Viada concedes that the five-to-one ratio will make nursing a more appealing career. "People who go into this are caregivers. When you force them to take care of more patients and ´´ spend less time with each one you are alienating them."
Schwarzenegger will be back in court on appeal in May. "He's proposing to delay the implementation to allow hospitals to catch up. And also to study the impact of the ratios on patient care," explains Soderlund.
"The Department of Health Services did a survey to see how many nurses were needed for the ratio," says Burger. "And this bill was 10 years in the making. It was the most scrutinized law to come out of Sacramento."
Burger says she's concerned that the media has represented this as a fight between the union and Schwarzenegger, without considering that most nurses favor the new ratio, adding, "We have 5-to-6,000 letters and postcards from nurses at hospitals who are in compliance, talking about how the ratios have already made a difference."
Labor activists have got to be loving CNA right now (especially after last year's supermarket strike went down in flames). The 60,000-member union has been having a very proactive year. "[It] is probably the most authentic labor union in the country today," Ralph Nader told the Los Angeles Times last week.
The union can take some of the responsibility for the governor's recent job approval rating sinking to 43 percent. (Critics speculate that it didn't help when he called nurses "a special interest group.") "We take extreme credit for his poll numbers dropping like a rock," CNA's executive director Rose Ann DeMoro also told the Times.
Talk about the hand that rocks the cradle. According to Burger, 92 percent of California nurses are aging female baby boomers, soccer moms and women who are caring for children, maybe even their grandchildren and elderly parents. Which has made their activism potent.
In December, CityBeat reported that CNA had filed a criminal complaint against Los Angeles' Good Samaritan Hospital, over "illegal and disgraceful spying practices" directed against nurses by hospital management. The union contended that management had placed a hidden surveillance camera in one of the nurses' lounges. According to CNA's Southern California director, Jill Furillo, RN, the camera was discovered by a group of nurses who "saw a light coming from the clock and wondered about it. Upon closer inspection, they saw that the light was coming through the pinhole in the number nine, and behind the nine were wires."
The case is still at issue. "We're still in the grievance process," says Yolie Rios, RN, who is heading the union's investigation at Good Sam. "The hospital hired a technical company to study equipment for video and audio images, but it could not be determined if there were." At the time, Furillo wondered if the cameras were an attempt by hospital administrators to monitor the organizing of the December 1 rally to protest Schwarzenegger's interference with the ratio. "I only speculated that the clocks were there to spy," she still insists.
And then there was the governor's move in January to dissolve the Board of Registered Nursing, which some CNA officials believe was an act of retaliation. The board is an independent organization that provides oversight, is an advocate for nurses' and patients rights, and promotes legislation to standardized nurse education and regulate the profession. Schwarzenegger proposed saving money by handing that job to the Department of Consumer Affairs, under the group that currently investigates complaints against the auto body industry.
Turns out the members of the Board of Registered Nursing receive no monetary compensation. Schwarzenegger dropped the idea on February 17, following a review by the Little Hoover Commission, which strongly recommended against it.
The nurses' biggest protest yet is scheduled to occur in Los Angeles' Pershing Square on May 25. It will include nurses, firefighters, policemen, and teachers, plus the widows and orphans of firefighters and police killed in the line of duty, who have taken a strong stand against the Governor's proposed privatization of public employee pension funds.
"When [Schwarzenegger] ran, he said he had his own money and he was going to be different," says Furillo. "But he has raised more money from corporate interests than any other governor. It's no secret that the pharmaceutical industry are some of his largest contributors." A fact that the governor's office has not chosen to refute: "The governor is the governor of the people and focused on bringing his message of reform to the people," Soderlund explains. "It costs money to bring that message to the people. The very same people who accuse the governor are raising just as much or more money. The people don't have anyone but him representing them in California."
Published: 04/28/2005
Nurses statewide join teachers and public employees in open street rebellion against Schwarzenegger
By Annette Stark
Everywhere Arnold Schwarzenegger goes these days, he's dogged by the irate California nurses union. Most of the time, that takes them to fundraisers. "We have a limited amount of money to fight this PR war with the governor," says California Nurses Association (CNA) President Deborah Burger, RN. "So we will continue to protest outside his fundraisers."
The union has posted a roster of articles about Schwarzenegger's corporate donations - the real "special interests" - on its website, along with a copy of a party invitation courtesy of the L.A. Times. Billed as "An Evening with Governor Schwarzenegger," the bash offers a long list of available perks, including a table seat with the governor and four photos ("two guests per photo") for $100,000. For $50,000, you get two seats at the governor's table and three photos.
The now-famous nurses' rebellion against the governor is actually only six months old. It began to take shape in November 2004 when Schwarzenegger issued a stop on a 1999 law signed by then-Governor Gray Davis that established a one-to-five nurse-to-patient ratio in California. The law was scheduled to go into effect in January 2005, but the governor issued an emergency order to block it and subsequently took the matter to court. The nurses won the first round in March, when the state Superior Court upheld the legislation.
According to the union, the law is critical to providing adequate patient care and also to encourage more young people to enter the nursing field. Burger says that the union explained to the Department of Health Services - and they agreed - that fulltime nurses were so overworked that many underemployed nurses chose to work part-time. "We said as soon as the ratios went into effect there would be more nurses willing to work."
The governor, however, has sided with the health care industry, which says that the supposed nursing shortage in California will make it difficult for many hospitals (especially those in rural areas) to hire enough staff to comply with the law. "We are the first in the nation to have staffing ratios. If we push too hard we will be a failed state," says Schwarzenegger spokesperson Julie Soderlund. "The state is facing a 14,000 nurse shortage. I think the governor has been very clear about solving this shortage. His priority is patient care."
"They try to argue that there's a nursing shortage, but the nursing registries have nurses," Burger says. "And hospitals like Kaiser already started hiring staff back in September in anticipation of January 2005. As soon as Arnold stepped in with that emergency regulation, some hospitals stopped."
But some headhunters argue that the shortage is real. At Preferred Healthcare Registry in San Diego, business manager Rebecca Viada says: "We aren't making nursing an attractive enough field. So, there are not enough nurses. Period. There aren't even enough people signing up in school."
Viada recruits nurses from around the world, sometimes spending as much as $5,000 getting a nurse from abroad settled in California, only to find that some of them will "go into culture shock." She believes that the ratio is "a great idea," but wonders how the state will find the resources to meet it. "We can't bring them in fast enough. And when they come from other countries the question is: are they qualified enough?"
Still, Viada concedes that the five-to-one ratio will make nursing a more appealing career. "People who go into this are caregivers. When you force them to take care of more patients and ´´ spend less time with each one you are alienating them."
Schwarzenegger will be back in court on appeal in May. "He's proposing to delay the implementation to allow hospitals to catch up. And also to study the impact of the ratios on patient care," explains Soderlund.
"The Department of Health Services did a survey to see how many nurses were needed for the ratio," says Burger. "And this bill was 10 years in the making. It was the most scrutinized law to come out of Sacramento."
Burger says she's concerned that the media has represented this as a fight between the union and Schwarzenegger, without considering that most nurses favor the new ratio, adding, "We have 5-to-6,000 letters and postcards from nurses at hospitals who are in compliance, talking about how the ratios have already made a difference."
Labor activists have got to be loving CNA right now (especially after last year's supermarket strike went down in flames). The 60,000-member union has been having a very proactive year. "[It] is probably the most authentic labor union in the country today," Ralph Nader told the Los Angeles Times last week.
The union can take some of the responsibility for the governor's recent job approval rating sinking to 43 percent. (Critics speculate that it didn't help when he called nurses "a special interest group.") "We take extreme credit for his poll numbers dropping like a rock," CNA's executive director Rose Ann DeMoro also told the Times.
Talk about the hand that rocks the cradle. According to Burger, 92 percent of California nurses are aging female baby boomers, soccer moms and women who are caring for children, maybe even their grandchildren and elderly parents. Which has made their activism potent.
In December, CityBeat reported that CNA had filed a criminal complaint against Los Angeles' Good Samaritan Hospital, over "illegal and disgraceful spying practices" directed against nurses by hospital management. The union contended that management had placed a hidden surveillance camera in one of the nurses' lounges. According to CNA's Southern California director, Jill Furillo, RN, the camera was discovered by a group of nurses who "saw a light coming from the clock and wondered about it. Upon closer inspection, they saw that the light was coming through the pinhole in the number nine, and behind the nine were wires."
The case is still at issue. "We're still in the grievance process," says Yolie Rios, RN, who is heading the union's investigation at Good Sam. "The hospital hired a technical company to study equipment for video and audio images, but it could not be determined if there were." At the time, Furillo wondered if the cameras were an attempt by hospital administrators to monitor the organizing of the December 1 rally to protest Schwarzenegger's interference with the ratio. "I only speculated that the clocks were there to spy," she still insists.
And then there was the governor's move in January to dissolve the Board of Registered Nursing, which some CNA officials believe was an act of retaliation. The board is an independent organization that provides oversight, is an advocate for nurses' and patients rights, and promotes legislation to standardized nurse education and regulate the profession. Schwarzenegger proposed saving money by handing that job to the Department of Consumer Affairs, under the group that currently investigates complaints against the auto body industry.
Turns out the members of the Board of Registered Nursing receive no monetary compensation. Schwarzenegger dropped the idea on February 17, following a review by the Little Hoover Commission, which strongly recommended against it.
The nurses' biggest protest yet is scheduled to occur in Los Angeles' Pershing Square on May 25. It will include nurses, firefighters, policemen, and teachers, plus the widows and orphans of firefighters and police killed in the line of duty, who have taken a strong stand against the Governor's proposed privatization of public employee pension funds.
"When [Schwarzenegger] ran, he said he had his own money and he was going to be different," says Furillo. "But he has raised more money from corporate interests than any other governor. It's no secret that the pharmaceutical industry are some of his largest contributors." A fact that the governor's office has not chosen to refute: "The governor is the governor of the people and focused on bringing his message of reform to the people," Soderlund explains. "It costs money to bring that message to the people. The very same people who accuse the governor are raising just as much or more money. The people don't have anyone but him representing them in California."
Published: 04/28/2005
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