Labor & Employment Law

?Off With Their Heads? Says Queen Meg in Attack on California Nurses

By Mike Hall

Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for California governor and billionaire former CEO of eBay has picked a fight with the California Nurses Association (CNA) that political observers think may backfire and energize nurses across the Golden State to work even harder to defeat Whitman in November. Meanwhile, the California Labor Federation launched a new online video and video game (left) that highlights Whitman?s job-slashing corporate history.

The Associated Press (AP) reports that Whitman, who spent $90 million of her $1 billion-plus fortune to win the Republican primary, dipped into her pocket to buy a list of all the state?s 370,000 registered nurses, complete with home addresses and is now bombarding them with anti-union propaganda. According to the AP:

Whitman hopes to drive a wedge between union leaders and their rank-and-file?a tactic only a multimillionaire candidate could afford to try, because of the expensive micro-targeting it requires.

It?s no secret the CNA is vigorously opposing Whitman who espouses a Wall Street/corporate agenda as the answer to the state?s fiscal problems and blames the state?s public employee unions as the cause of the budget crisis. That agenda, says the AP,

includes cutting 40,000 state government jobs, dramatically reducing public employee pensions, deregulating industry and cutting welfare benefits.

Geri Jenkins, RN, CNA co-president, says:

For whatever reason, billionaire Whitman has made the decision to attack nurses.  She?s calling us at our homes with push polls, putting out false information to the media, posting deceitful Web sites.

It may be a case of thin-skin. Earlier this year, CNA unveiled its Queen Meg character and campaign to parody Whitman?s imperial attitude toward workers. (Click here to join Queen Meg?s Facebook page and here for Queen Meg videos.)

Sherry Bebitch-Jeffe, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, told AP that singling out nurses?who have quite a positive public image?might not be great strategy.

I would not have singled out the nurses association, even if they were making fun of me. But I have a feeling that’s part of the motivation, too?.It appears to me that all she’s doing is energizing the nurses and the nurses union.

Says the state Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski:

Meg Whitman has made a game of downsizing workers and outsourcing their jobs, and walking away with a very real fortune for herself in the process. The record shows that Whitman is a one-person weapon of mass job destruction. By attempting to buy the California governor?s office, Whitman wants to take her game to the next level, but we can?t forget there are real lives at stake with every job she cuts, outsources or downsizes.

Click here for the game and here for the video.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on July 14, 2010 (boomark / email).