Editor's note: A patient in a hospital went in for hip surgery last week.  Doctors performed the surgery -- on the wrong hip.  Our colleague Ed explains what this has to do with collective bargaining and schools.

Posted by Ed at AFT

I'm going to take a break from convention blogging to respond to a question from the Chalkboard's Joe Williams: "What do you make of job actions aimed at kids who desperately need every ounce of education we can give them?"  Joe, it is dishonest to frame a labor-management dispute as a conflict between service providers and the recipients of those services. That’s management’s way of using the people receiving the services as hostages.  Of course, you do blog for a management organization.

In Englewood, New Jersey, AFT represents nurses who are on strike.  The hospital is seeking large pension givebacks.  The union has offered a compromise that includes a diminishment of retirement benefits for its members.  Management refused the compromise and the nurses went out.  Management brought in strikebreaking nurses from a temporary staffing agency.  For those of you not familiar with the labor movement, these are people we refer to as scabs. Earlier this week,  strikebreakers prepped for an operation on a patient's hip. If they had prepared for the surgery to be performed on the infected hip, it would be one thing, but the operation was performed on the wrong hip. 

Joe Williams' frame makes this the fault of nurses who refuse to lie down for a pension cut, rather than management that would spend millions of dollars on strikebreakers to stick it to them.