NURSES UNION
As strike deadline is set, a search for solutions
I'm a registered nurse and have worked for almost 32 years at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. I love my job, and I love my hospital.
This year's labor contract process is very distressing ("Some nurses resist the call to strike," June 28). Our union leaders are telling us if talks get going, a contract could be hammered out in three to four days, tops.
Our community, our hospitals, my profession and the need for care are not going away. We nurses are committed to patient safety and excellent quality care.
Why are the administrators so unwilling to negotiate? Can we get the show on the road and come to an agreement rapidly? Time is running out. Please come to the table.
Do we talk or do we walk?
ANN WANDZEL, ARDEN HILLS
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Nurses are among my heroes, but I do have questions about the strike situation: Just how bad is the staffing? Are units really understaffed, or are national representatives involved in the talks telling us they are?
Minnesota nurses rank third nationally in wages and benefits, yet the rank of hospital reimbursement to Minnesota from Medicare is 38th in the country; this surely must hurt the hospitals' bottom lines.
Part-time nurses make $62,000 plus full benefits; full-time nurses make $79,000 (and up), plus full benefits. In this economy, please do not take your advantages for granted.
May both sides look at the situation through the other's glasses and reasonably reach a solution.
E. CADMUS, Minneapolis
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As I follow the nursing contract negotiations, I can't help but wonder about the true motivations of the nursing leaders.
Although improved patient care is portrayed as the sole consideration, the real goal of the union is power and economic rewards. In this era of hospital cost escalations, diminished third-party reimbursement and provisions of Obamacare, hospitals face nothing but financial problems. Despite that, the nurses make demands they know are impossible to attain.
Similar subterfuge exists in the teaching profession. Although the National Education Association states that its sole purpose is education of our children, the true purpose of the teachers unions are to obtain economic benefits for teachers. If education was indeed the sole concern, elementary education would not be in its current sorry state.
SEYMOUR HANDLER, EDINA
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I am a union-registered nurse, and as a professional I have a code of ethics that I am obligated to follow.
Provision six in the code states that the nurse participates in establishing, maintaining and improving health care environments and conditions of employment conducive to the provision of quality health care and consistent with the values of the profession through individual and collective action.
This campaign that the union is engaged in is for safe patient care. This campaign is for the nurses who provide this care today, tomorrow and into the future. It is an obligation we assumed when we entered this profession -- to leave nursing a better place than when we found it and always do it with improved patient care.
MISCHELLE KNIPE, DASSEL, MINN.
gay pride festival
Judge's ruling: Poetic or constitutional justice?
The ruling allowing Brian Johnson to proselytize at the Gay Pride Festival was perhaps poetic justice, but it is not constitutional justice ("Bible handout OK'd at festival," June 26).
It was poetic justice because the people trying to prevent Johnson from appearing probably argued that trying to obstruct the Republican National Convention was protected by the Constitution. Similar liberal causes created the precedent upon which Johnson now relies. The idea that the Constitution gives anyone the right to interfere with the Constitutional rights of others is, however, ridiculous.
The First Amendment protection of free speech has never given people the right to force others to listen to their speech. People cannot show up at your door and demand that you listen to them as they try to convert you, sell to you, or ask you for your vote.
Thus, when people are exercising their Constitutional right to lawfully assemble, why does someone now have the right to put their free speech right above the Constitutional rights of everyone else?
Brian Johnson is free to find any other public place to speak to whoever wants to listen to him, and that is all the Constitution guarantees.
BOB GUST, BLOOMINGTON
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The attention the Pride Festival has given Brian Johnson by its refusal of a permit last year, his arrest and the court case cost Johnson little to nothing. What it has done is make the festival sponsors look petty and small-minded, while making a martyr of Johnson.
Did Johnson ever disrupt the festival in the eight years he was permitted to participate? Did he ever assault anyone? I doubt it. If he had he wouldn't have been permitted back for eight years.
Sadly, the festival, in its short-sightedness, gave Johnson free publicity and a court victory. Both are priceless to him.
Johnson is just as entitled to peacefully participate as the Rev. Tom Brock is entitled to preach what he will from his pulpit, and on radio and television stations he or his congregation pay to carry his programming ("Cries of 'hypocrite' for pastor, report," June 24).
Just as Brock can be silenced when listeners turn off their radios and televisions and stop sending Hope Lutheran Church money, so, too, Johnson can be silenced by us -- the out, proud, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community, as well as our supporters and allies -- when we ignore Johnson.
JOHN ADRIAN, STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.
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I have a question for people who have weighed in on both sides of this issue: What if a gay group wanted to hand out literature at your church picnic in a public park?
If the answer is not the same, you need to rethink your position.
DON BIXLER, BROOKLYN PARK
