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Schwarzenegger Loses Fight to Stop Ratios

"Consider it a victory for patients and a victory for nurses," says Kathy Sackman, President of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals and AFSCME International Vice President. After a year of legal maneuvers to postpone the implementation of the country's first nurse-to-patient ratio law, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has dropped an appeal of an earlier ruling against his administration and will cease proceeding against the ratio law.

The law, signed by former Governor Gray Davis in 1999, mandates staffing ratios in California's acute care hospitals. Schwarzenegger — at the urging of the California Hospital Association — had made it a priority to overturn the law. This is the latest setback for the anti-union governor, who once called nurses a special interest group and said he was always "kicking their butts."

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