The California Nurses Association made its political bones, so to speak, in 1999 when it persuaded the Legislature and a newly inaugurated, union-allied Democratic governor, Gray Davis, to impose strict nurse-to-patient ratios on hospitals.
The organization, hoping to become a nationwide union, wanted to prove that its aggressive political tactics could deliver with a staffing law that would ease nurses’ workloads and indirectly compel hospitals to hire more, which would drive their wages upward.
Nearly two decades later, the CNA’s nationwide organizational campaign (via National Nurses United) and its push to pass similar staffing laws in other states are still works in progress. But in California, the nurses became a political powerhouse.
Their leaders thwarted an effort by Davis’ successor, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, to overturn the staffing law – a conflict marked by weeks of sharply personal exchanges – and played a leading role in the union coalition that defeated Schwarzenegger’s efforts to overhaul public employee pensions and make other major changes.
The CNA is still fully engaged in political warfare, currently taking on the state’s Democratic establishment as a strenuous advocate of universal health care and as the chief sponsor of a rebellion questioning the legitimacy of Eric Bauman’s recent election as state party chairman.
Meanwhile, the 1999 nurse staffing law has spawned annual efforts by other California unions to bypass collective bargaining and pursue working condition goals via political decree from a Legislature whose majority Democrats are closely aligned with labor.
Two bills moving through the Legislature this year are examples of the syndrome, one affecting dialysis clinics that treat kidney failure patients by periodically filtering wastes from their blood, and the other affecting private ambulance companies.
Union advocates contend, as the CNA did in 1999, that they would safeguard patients and, therefore, justify the bypassing of contract negotiations.
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