Franklin Matters: Inside Question One: 2 key pieces of info that factored for my decision

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Inside Question One: 2 key pieces of info that factored for my decision

I won't say how I voted but I think it makes sense to share the info that helped me to make an informed decision. You can use this to help make your own informed decision.

Whatever position you decide to take is your choice. The only recommendation I'll make is please vote! Your vote is a critical part of our political process.

Piece #1

Jerold Duquette wrote a series of essays on Question 1 that were published on MassPoliticsProfs http://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/. Deep in one essay he writes:

"Both the advocates and opponents of Question One decided that average voters would choose whatever side they thought nurses were on. Unfortunately for the proponents, “nurses” is too large a category to evoke the intended group sympathy among voters.

Had they understood the issue as a conventional dispute between labor and management, they would have realized that the principles and interests advanced by nurse staffing ratios are of hospital bedside nurses (i.e. labor), but not necessarily the principles and interests of nurse managers or nurses who work in settings or facilities where bedside nurses (especially non-unionized bedside nurses) are not severely hampered by patient assignment overloads.

The opponents of Question One are hospital executives and nurse managers (i.e. management) and they have been able to exploit the public’s ignorance about the nursing profession to disguise the clear cleavage on Question One. Opponents understand it’s a labor- management dispute and that average voters would assume that “nurses” are on the side of labor.

Since nurse-managers and other types of nurses are not labor, but are, in fact, management, the “No on One” side has had the luxury of making it look like the laborers in this labor-management dispute are not united in support of Question One, signaling that the law being proposed may not be aligned with the interests and principles of labor."

Continue to read the essay online
http://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2018/10/18/question-1-voters-shouldnt-be-confused/

Within the same essay he references a WBUR poll that helps to show the point that while nurses are on both sides of the issue, nurses is too broad a term to use and when you break down the pill results, some types of nurses are on one side or the other.

The link to the WBUR poll article
http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2018/10/15/wbur-poll-nurse-staffing-question-one

Inside Question One: 2 key piece of info that factored for my decision

Piece #2

"The POLITICAL bottom line is this: If Question One passes, negotiations on this very important issue to bedside nurses will be energized and the ballot measure itself will have served one of the primary purposes of ballot measures in the first place, which is not to allow average voters to make complex policy decisions, but rather to allow the general public to exert POLITICAL influence on behalf of interests that would otherwise be at a severe disadvantage in getting their issues addressed by politicians who depend on the financial support of wealthy special interest groups.

When proponents and opponents of ballot measures treat average voters like policy experts they are really manipulating them, which is why both sides on every ballot question supplement their “expert” arguments and endorsements with appeals to voters’ in-group loyalties, or as in the case of the opponents of Question One this year, to average voters’ irrational fears.

Voters can and will happily choose sides in a political dispute and ballot questions, like any statute, are NOT set in stone. They can be amended or even repealed by elected policy makers, which means that despite the hype, voters will not have the final say on Nurse Staffing Ratios when they vote next month. Pretending that they will and that a “mistake” by voters will bring on the apocalypse is at best naive.

A YES vote will force hospital lobbyists, nurse’s union representatives, and the state’s elected policy makers back to the bargaining table. A yes vote will force all three groups to accept meaningful responsibility for dealing effectively with this issue.

A NO vote will further empower and embolden the wealthy special interests whose outsized political influence has prevented the legislature from taking up the nurses’ cause, further weakening the ability of healthcare workers to resist exploitation by hospital administrators."