And it was really nice to hear that a person was able to persuade a republican to listen, learn and respond. Very hopeful, and it helps that you balance your reporting with news like this.

Looking forward to your next article.

karen

Your comments got cut abruptly with the arrival of Sen. Kerry. If you are interested in discussing, please email me at univrslhealth at gmail dot com. I would love to converse with you about ways to help strengthen workers’ rights and working conditions. Have a few, but they are too lengthy to put here in comments without hijacking your post. Thanks for all you’re doing- :^}

The professional non-management staff of the AFL-CIO, which is organized under The Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America, just yesterday ratified their new contract with the Federation, after a long round of tough but inherently fair bargaining.

Judge dismisses Plame lawsuit

It is amazing that we have lost so many working class rural votes to the GOP when the GOP at its heart has never been about working class issues.

That is why free trade agreements like NAFTA were so destructive, not just due to their impact on the economy and health and welfare of milions of Americans, but also due to the fact they were passed by a Democratic Administration in an ill-conceived move.

We’ve got to move beyond and ensure Democrats live up to the promise of being the people’s party. If not, we’ll wind up in another cycle of Newts, Bushes and who knows whatever other gohouls and goblins await us.

The GOP’s appeal to these people is directly related to their fear, ignorance, and racism/sexism. Find me a rural voter who is self confident, educated, and not racist/sexist, and I’ll show you a Democrat/progressive.

Thanks.
zen

Tula:

I think your comment was cut off.

I was a nursing administrator who went into this area because of a perceived need to advocate for nurses who were given overloads of responsibility without any authority to effectively advocate for patients and the resources needed to keep their patient case loads reasonable and safe. There is no way to remain ethical as a nurse manager, director or administrator in today’s hospitals, nursing homes and in most organizations that employ nurses. I believe that the only way to do this is for nurses to withdraw as employees and to form professional practice groups, elect their own nursing leaders and contract directly with patient care institutions to provide professional nursing. When nurses choose their nursing leaders, this will unite all nurses, will promote joint appointments for nursing faculty so that they can remain clinically current, will integrate nursing research into practice, and will fundamentally change nursing for the better as a full bona fide profession. But the traditional worker/manager model doesn’t work, and unions as they are now, can’t represent nursing administrators. In a professional practice group model, they could provide representation as consultants for contract negotiation, contract management, PPG management, etc. It would be the best of both worlds – new markets for unions, and an empowered and united nursing workforce that could advocate for their members and for patients.

This is so very true, yet I think there are, sadly, few nurses who are willing to go this far. Nursing as a profession, for all the gains we’ve made, still has to fight for minimal recognition by the media, by lawmakers. Case in point, the newest issue of Newsweek has an article about a doc working on improving outcomes for heart-stopping heart attacks. The article describes the other doctors he has recruited for his team, but doesn’t mention the nurses who are organizing and providing the care and doing the hands-on monitoring of the success of his program. Nurses are always just assumed, we are expected to be perfectly content and willing to do what we do without recognition or recompense beyond the flowers, fruit and thank you notes. It is no surprise to this 26 year veteran that we are going to be scraping for nurses in the coming decade.