Letters to the editor Dec. 6

Time for a fair contract

I’ve been working at Kalispell Regional Medical Center for 10 years. Throughout the 10 years at KRH, I’ve witnessed many changes. Changes that haven’t always been for the best and changes that haven’t treated everyone equally. Unilateral changes were made without much nursing input and in the past few years, KRH has been implementing a philosophy that seems to put profits over patients.

That’s why the nurses formed a union at KRH, to continue to provide the best quality care to the valley and raise wages. As a member of the nurse bargaining team, a representational group of nurses, I can attest to the all the hard work put into crafting a first contract and moving it across the table. We hope to settle a fair contract soon.

We want to settle soon as the crisis of the pandemic looms over the valley. We’re asking for fair and safe staffing that will allow us to deliver adequate and exceptional care, considering we are working under covid-19 conditions with cases rising every day. Staff are experiencing burnout and feeling unheard.

We need adequate staffing to provide quality care and fair wages to keep nurses in the Flathead. We also need union security and a voice in Covid safety. Let’s settle soon and quite the red tape. We’re asking for a true partnership in care and for a path forward in safety. We’re hoping we can work together to settle a fair contract in the coming months.

With the backing of our communities’ collective voice, we can win a strong contract that keeps nurses in the valley and protects the patient we care for every day. Now is the time to invest in frontline nurses and settle a fair contract.

—Lucinda Wallace, Kalispell

Counting problems

It seems that the validity of the presidential election boils down to the dependability of the process. Counting is not complicated and should be straight forward.

The U.S. Census Bureau has been “counting” routinely almost since the inception of our republic. This year I was hired as a Census enumerator only calling on households that had not responded to extensive efforts to collect basic household data via mail-in or online responses. Because of COVID, Census enumerators were not sent to the field until three-plus months after Census counting had begun, April 1.

The Census Bureau is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, a government agency that should have their act together, right? Wrong! I was in the field seven days a week, week after week, and called on hundreds of households who were on the list of non-responders. At least 85% of the households I called upon reported that they had responded.

We were using U.S. Census issued “smartphones” with a special Census app loaded to do interviews. This information was uploaded several times each day and the following morning we would receive a new list from Census central. Several times I was directed back to the same address I had completed days or weeks earlier. Several times I interviewed households that had been interviewed previously by other enumerators. In some cases I was the third enumerator to complete an interview.

If the U.S. Census Bureau can have these kind of “counting” problems it begs the question of comparison to the ability of states to count votes. Trump’s questioning the aspects of counting all legal votes should be seen as an effort to identify any problems in the process and to correct procedures that allow every and only legal votes to be counted.

Isn’t that what we all want?

—Rob Holston, Ketchikan, Alaska; formerly of Kalispell

Where’s the proof?

I have two concerns about Richard Grozik’s “Election integrity” letter of Nov. 19, in which he wrote about the “coup attempt by the Democrats and their accomplices in the Deep State.”

First concern: Donald Trump and his supporters have been complaining about the Deep State for several years but I’ve yet to see any supporting facts, including what their goals are and the names of any of its members. Given this lack of information, a cautious person might believe that it’s purely a figment of his overheated imagination or, even worse, due to his desire to arouse and inflame his supporters.

Second question, and in a similar vein, I’d like to know what happened to Trump’s pre-election promises to “drain the swamp.” In the almost four years since he was elected, I’m not aware of even one new proclamation from him on that subject. In fact, due to many of the decisions that he’s made since being in office, those swamps have become vastly more polluted.

I must confess that I’ve been wrong more than once in my life, so if I’m mistaken on either of the above two subjects, I’d welcome more information. However, I do ask for specifics, and not just parroted phrases. And, if Trump’s supporters don’t have any answers to those two questions, then perhaps they might want to consider re-evaluating their opinions.

—Colin Sellwood, Whitefish