I'm at my high school reunion this weekend. Last night, we were hanging out at Laurello with old classmates who are now living all over the country. We talk about the usual, how'd you meet your spouse, where you working, how many kids, it's about time you came out the closet, you've been divorced how long, who you voting for in November? You know, catch up stuff.

Among the questions last night was a new one I didn't know about before...What's your website. I'm always happy to share...Uniongal. Even bought my URL this year (reminds me I need to work on the migration to the uniongal URL). So as we talked a little about my unionst activities, something interesting happened, one of my nursing friends told me that the University Hospital System blocks CNA. Recently at work, I discovered that Huffington Post has been blocked, so hearing about the blocking of CNA, has me thinking about preserving access to information.

On a company computer, I do believe that it is important to limit some access to some sites. For instance, porn. Employees, unless it's their job, should not be accessing porn from work. Likewise, employees should have access to say the Detroit Free Paper or maybe the Washington Post, or say, Huffington Post. What's offensive or unproductive about Huffington Post?

So, I get the reasons, but I'm not sure what the reason is for University Hospitals blocking of CNA. You see, CNA's site does more than just try to organize nurses, they also provide vital information on continuing education, information for new RNs, they even produced Registered Nurse Magazine. There's a wealth of information on that site other than just organizing information. But I suppose if you want to keep your nurses without access to continuing education information and nursing publications then this makes sense. After all, these darn nurses are really just trying to form a union, and that is clearly NOT what University Hospitals wants and that is really all that fucking matters to the University Hospitals.

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Joe’s got a good post up right now on the latest California Nurse’s actions against Sutter Health.

This is an additional action that seems to keep happening because the conglomerate that owns Sutter doesn’t seem to care about patient care. For more on past actions, check out the October 07 action and also the California Nurse’s Association press release.


Now, just in case you think it's unusual or perhaps even okay to close "unprofitable" hospitals, keep in mind, these hospitals are usually in areas that are predominantly poor. From Fire On The Mountain

I was in Plainfield last weekend when it seemed like the entire city turned out to demonstrate against the for-profit Solaris Healthcare corporation's plans to shut down the more than 130 year-old Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center.

-snip-

...local community-based hospitals are being bought-up and shut-down by large for-profit medical centers or the same huge insurance corporations that view healthcare as a business instead of a right. Since around the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, New Jersey witnessed local community-based hospitals close at a frightening rate. Organizing to stop this trend is literally a life-or-death issue to working people in this state, and around the country.

I wonder how many other community based hospitals have closed that have slipped under the radar because the nurses haven't unionized or the community felt helpless to stop it. In DC, we watched as DC General closed it's doors and a Women's hospital as well, and that's just been in the last 7 years. One other hospital has been threatening closure but has not yet closed its doors. I wonder how much longer it will stay open when it has to compete for "paying customers" along with three teaching hospitals in the area. All in all, this situation looks pretty darn bleak.

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