Thursday, October 05, 2006

Crazy Anarcho-Syndical Nurses

While everybody’s worrying about page boys, the National Labor Relations Board announced in favor of a broad “supervisors” industrial classification that would deny many in the ranks of labor the right to a union.

It’s the kind of thing that makes the world go ‘round, but garners very little attention.

Here’s the lede paragraph and a link to the piece, which ran in the “Contra Costa Times.”
“Leaders of unionized nurses in the Bay Area and elsewhere in California vowed Wednesday to strike rather than capitulate if hospitals seek to enforce a federal ruling that nurses who have minor duties as supervisors could be designated managers and no longer be able to participate in a union.”

The goal here, rather transparent, is no other than to further weaken the labor movement. The California Nurses Association has said they are having none of it and recorded a strike vote it will apply to any company, “exploiting this ruling.”

That’s pretty radical stuff for the American labor movement. The nurses would essentially be challenging the government to fire them all if they struck over the issue. There’s the dare because there is a shortage of nurses in health care. So they’re really holding a gun to the head of the powers-that-be, as it were.

But the union is no normal union. Here’s a piece from something called
“Capitol Hill” that goes into the nurses’ “deep ties to the social-justice and consumer-advocacy movement and a long-standing relationship with Ralph Nader...”

The union is betting big on the California voter initiative Proposition 89, which is a clean campaign money initiative and has 70,000 members to bless its efforts.

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