Commentary –

Whose Side Are Rowland’s Critics On?

By Chris Powell

Governor Rowland has been accused by the nursing home workers union, the state Senate’s Democratic leaders, and state Comptroller Nancy S. Wyman of “taking sides” in the union’s warning strike against 40 nursing homes. Rowland’s critics are upset that, to help the homes keep operating, he used the Connecticut National Guard and authorized extra state payments to the homes so they could hire replacement workers.

That, Rowland’s critics say, makes him a strikebreaker. The union has gone to federal court to stop him, on the grounds that federal law prohibits the government from favoring one side or the other in a private labor dispute; the Senate Democratic leaders are cheering the union on; and the comptroller is demanding a detailed financial accounting from the governor.

But Rowland’s critics seem unable to acknowledge the obvious explanation for what he has done with the nursing homes. That is, most patients in the homes that were struck, like most of the 30,000 or so patients in the 262 nursing homes throughout Connecticut, are essentially wards of the state. They cannot support themselves, so the state is responsible for their care and pays nearly a billion dollars a year for it, eight percent of the state budget. While the nursing homes are indeed private enterprises, they are government contractors performing a vital public health function. That is why government cannot treat them as any other business, cannot be indifferent to what may happen to them and their patients, and cannot, as Rowland’s critics imply, be neutral should there be any danger that patients might be left without adequate care because of a picket line.

So yes, the governor has taken sides — the side he was elected to take, the government’s side, the public’s side, the side of the greatest good for the greatest number.

The real question is for those of Rowland’s critics who are also state officials: Senate President Kevin B. Sullivan, Senate Democratic Majority Leader George C. Jepsen, and Comptroller Wyman. Whose side are they on? Or, really, since they are public officials, why are they not on the public’s side? Why do they believe that strikes against public health and safety and the public treasury should be supported?

Sullivan and Jepsen were enthusiastically against the public’s side when they addressed a union rally at the state Capitol last week. “We’re going to win,” Jepsen told union members. Sullivan said, “There is no question that you are in the right.” But whom does Jepsen, a state legislator, mean by “we”? Is he part of the government or part of a union that, in pursuing its own interest, necessarily compromises a vital function of government? Is Jepsen on the side of those to whom most of that billion dollars per year in state appropriation is paid, or the side of the people from whom it is taken, the people who are taxed to raise it? And in his conviction that the nursing home workers’ union is right, what does Sullivan think becomes of the sovereignty of the State of Connecticut when a special interest presumes to dictate the terms of public health and safety that the government ordinarily would set? Does the government have any broadly representative function, or is it just the vehicle by which the financial demands of special interests are enforced against a helpless public?

Of course what is going on here may be more a matter of partisan politics than of political philosophy. Rowland is not only a Republican and the head of the state administration who has to keep things running, but also is connected politically to business, not labor. In contrast, Sullivan, Jepsen, and Wyman are Democrats, and organized labor in general and the nursing home workers union in particular are leading constituencies in their party.

Simply out of partisan politics, Rowland may never have supported a strike in his life, and Sullivan, Jepsen, and Wyman may never have opposed one. But two years ago Rowland joined the legislative leaders in offering the nursing home workers a generous increase in pay and staff, and he proposes a modest increase this year, so he cannot be out to destroy their union. And if all strikes cannot be automatically wrong, can every strike be automatically right? Do even the government and the public have no interests at all that might be superior to those of a strike?

If that’s what Sullivan, Jepsen, and Wyman really think, and why they criticize Rowland for taking sides against a strike when they are taking sides against their own government, against majority rule, and against democracy itself, they have added a few disturbing asterisks to the oath of office they took.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)