Militancy in Edina

This evening I stopped by Fairview Southdale, one of the hospitals where Minnesota nurses are on strike for 24 hours (and where I myself have been stitched, casted and detonsiled).

Groups of red-shirted women (mainly) surrounded the hospital.  I parked in the sparse 'patient parking' area and walked over to the above-pictured group, where I spoke for awhile with the pickets, who were impassioned but friendly with a skeptical blogger. (They found me quite photogenic also.)  An Edina Police squad car was near the side entrance; apparently there had been some minor unpleasantness when the replacement workers' coach entered earlier.

Political people generally approach strikes with predetermined leanings; among senate district convention attending DFLers, support for unions is an article of faith beyond discussion.

The nurses have a list of grievances and demands as does management--relating both to compensation and workplace policies.  Public opinion is the gallery; the people like nurses. 

In economic life--indeed, in life (blogging excepted)--I generally assume self-interest to be a primary motivation.  Since acting based on self-interest is frowned upon, people find it easier to advance their self-interest by claiming plausibly non-egocentric motives.  The striking nurses assert that their primary goals today concern patient safety (i.e. staffing ratios) and not compensation.  'We're going on strike'--they effectively tell the public--'not for our benefit but for yours.'  Buddhistic indeed.

Staffing ratios in non-unionized professions are decided by management.  In union hospitals in Minnesota [both kinds exist here], nurses believe that--left to its own devices--management would thin staffing to the point where thousands of needless deaths would occur each year.  (At present the nurses believe nearly 1,500 Minnesotans needlessly die each year because our hospitals aren't properly staffed.) 

I have considerable faith in another tribe of energetic Minnesota professionals--plaintiff's attorneys--and doubt hospital managers would blithely disregard their own economic incentives, were they to make staffing decisions as other managers do--on their own. 

Our economy benefits from a flexible, competitive labor market; I don't believe we'd all be better off if rates of unionization doubled.  I don't believe an easy, general economic advance could be accomplished were all workers to simultaneously demand increased compensation.

Chatting amicably with the nurses this evening, I asked about the out-of-state replacements who were staffing the hospital today--and easily succeeded in eliciting the desired term-of-art: Scabs! 

Scab is an epithet of dehumanization, of course--placing in circulation the dubious notion that to disagree with the Minnesota Nurses Association in 2010 is to embrace management's every dastardly clubbing from 1934 and beyond. 

'Was it your hope that no non-union nurses would replace you, in the hospital today?' I inquire.  The strikers freely admit they have no desire to shut the hospital down today--accepting full well they'd be replaced during the strike.  It seems strange then--to my moral sense--to label such [sanctioned, welcome] replacement workers scabs.

Dear Fr. Greg Welch:

At the 9 AM Mass at St. Patrick's two days ago, the homily time-slot was handed over to Tom Chitta and Geetha Yeruva, the founders of the 'Foundation for Children in Need'.

The two spoke about the poverty in rural India and of their love and admiration for America--and Minnesota--and how materially 'blessed' we here are.  Dr. Yeruva mentioned her love and admiration for Mother Teresa, as the squinting/praying Chitta stood to her side.

The Better Business Bureau rates FCN negatively; it would seem a basic point of ethics that St. Patrick's priest should bring this information to the attention of parishioners prior to asking them to contribute.

After Mass, I spoke with Chitta and Yeruva. Given that both had called attention to rural India's poverty and America's material blessing [their word]--I wanted to learn if they actually believe that God ordained the massive economic inequality between rich and poor countries. No, they both said, that's not what they meant. [It's merely what they said, I reminded them.]

Chitta and Yeruva flatter Edinans by telling them nonsense that--to their credit--neither believes, in order to maximize donations.

Since Dr. Yeruva praised Mother Teresa during her moment on stage, I asked each if they'd read The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens brilliant dissection of the 'simpering Bambi narcissist and a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf'. (If any self-respecting person 'admires Mother Teresa', they're required to have read Hitchens' book, and to have formulated some plausibly adult response to it, no?) Both Chitta and Yeruva had heard of The Missionary Position; neither had taken the time to read the short book. Shame on them.

Some Indians (in India) view Indian Catholics as beholden to a foreign ideology--ever willing to grovel and bow before rich foreigners, unconcerned for the corrupting psychic effect this has upon--for example--parishioners at St. Patrick's, to say nothing of the indignity it inflicts upon poor Indians.

It is sad to me that St. Patrick's leadership is so willing to encourage this nonsense.

Sincerely,

Gavin Sullivan

Memorial Day 2010

 

I attended Eden Prairie's Memorial Day commemoration yesterday, an overwhelmingly white middle-class celebration of mindless nationalism and anti-individualism, as usual.  A few memories:

'Acting Mayor' Brad Aho recites Freedom's Flag, Charles M. Province's chilling assault on liberal values.  (When was the last US military conflict in which our soldiers defended domestic freedom of speech?)  The poem also celebrates the longhair's freedom to burn the flag--though most conservatives would gladly withdraw this right via Constitutional amendment--overruling our freethinking uniformed personnel without a moment's hesitation.

A Protestant minister--a Rev. Anderson, as I recall--speaks with self-congratulatory air.  (Why is it always a Christian minister, at these events?)  Afterward, I ask Anderson:  Why not find a Hindu or Muslim spiritual leader?  Anderson takes umbrage at my discomfort--and readily endorses the idea of having clerics of different faiths play his role at subsequent years' ceremonies.  Anderson is unaware his public prayer was theologically specific (he squinted Lordward) and not some all-encompassing non-sectarian statement.  (The event's ministerial moment suggests religious belief is required, in Eden Prairie, if you seek full community membership.)  But why include a superstition expert at all?

A classmate of Randall Voas remembers the CV-22 Osprey pilot who was killed in a crash (in Afghanistan in April) along with three others--maiming perhaps dozens more, as the $100 million bird was totalled.  (The tragedy remains under investigation by the Air Force Special Operations Command's Accident Investigation Board.)  The classmate goes on at length about Voas' noble passion for 'defending our freedom'--but at no point argues that American freedom is on the line in Afghanistan.  Moral seriousness indeed.