Steven Greenhut Sr. editorial writer and columnist The Orange County Register sgreenhut@ocregister.com

One of the most regrettable realities of union domination of any industry is that it turns otherwise honorable professionals into the equivalent of political street-fighters who focus on organizing and arm-twisting to divert more resources and government benefits to "the cause," rather than on creating a better product that meets the customers' needs.

Keep that in mind as the governor is depicted as the spawn of Satan in recent TV and radio ads by nurses, firefighters and members of other unions who would like you to believe that their only goal is to improve public health, safety and protection.

Don't believe them. The governor has many flaws, but his attempt to save the state budget from Gray Davis-like malfeasance is not an attack on Californians, but an attempt to keep the state budget from resembling the city budget of San Diego, where excessive pay and pensions for union members have pushed the once well-managed city to the brink of bankruptcy. And he is trying to fix one of those crazy California health care mandates that is making it impossible for hospitals to meet the needs of patients.

One of the most aggressive challenges thrown at the governor is from the California Nurses Association, a 60,000-member organization run by a $175,000-a-year labor activist named Rose Ann DeMoro. She is not a nurse, and she seemed proud in a recent newspaper profile of her aggressive, accept-no-compromise approach.

Forget about the sight of kind, healing nurses. We're talking tough-as-nails, Teamsters-style aggression here, in pursuit of objectives that are self-serving, not public-spirited.

The union is hard left in its politics, and DeMoro rallies nurses to dog the governor at his speaking engagements, yelling and accusing him of sexism and virtually every other evil. The Los Angeles Times described a DeMoro-sponsored rally whereby nurses clogged streets and yelled this epithet at Schwarzenegger contributors: "Corporate scum! Shame on you."

The alternative American Nurses Association believes that the California Nurses Association is using its battle against the governor as a means to expand its union-organizing activities, rather than to secure real benefits for nurses.

Why do these vocal nurses despise the governor so?

The most obvious battle has been over state-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios. The union-sponsored law, passed by the Democratic Legislature and signed by Gov. Davis, mandates an inflexible five patients for every nurse. That ratio cannot change, even during slow hours and even during breaks, which is why the governor tried to change the law.

The ratio law has become an administrative nightmare. There aren't enough nurses to fill the slots mandated by the law, and the law is one of the top reasons cited by several of the hospital emergency rooms that have shut down in recent years, especially in Los Angeles County.

Emergency rooms cannot afford to maintain such a high staffing level. Under the ratio law, the only choice available to hospitals is to hire more nurses or serve fewer patients. Unions are about little more than driving up the price of their members' labor, so it's easy to see what this policy is about. Supporters of the ratios claim they are needed because nurses are stretched dangerously thin, but their "solution" only makes matters worse.

Unfortunately, the public suffers, as it finds fewer hospitals to get treated or longer lines for care.

Government mandates cannot fix market problems. There aren't enough nurses, so forcing hospitals to hire more of what is not there only exacerbates the problem. That's why the governor suspended the law, citing emergency conditions. A judge issued an injunction overturning his decision.

Meanwhile, as Vicki Bradshaw, secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Agency, explains, the state has 14,000 nursing vacancies statewide, and is producing about 10,000 too-few nurses a year to meet growing demand.

A key part of the problem is that California nursing schools cannot handle the demand. There are 10,500 qualified applicants a year for nursing school slots, but only 6,000 openings. Most nursing school applicants are accepted to public colleges by a lottery system, in which a mediocre student has the same shot as an exemplary one to get accepted. So much for working hard and achieving good grades so that you can pursue your chosen career dream.

Given this convoluted, inadequate and dysfunctional nursing system, 45 percent of California's nurses come from outside the state or from outside the country. Rather than focus on fixing these real impediments to enlarging the pool of qualified nurses, the nurses' union has chosen to battle the governor and take to the streets.

CNA is angry, also, at the governor's now-abandoned plan to reform all state pensions by requiring new government hires to get defined contributions (a promised amount of contributions) plans rather than budget-busting defined benefits (a promised amount of paid benefits) that public sector employees now enjoy.

(Only 8,000 of CNA's members are public employees, but the union has identified the pension issue as an important line in the sand for opposing Gov. Schwarzenegger.)

We all value the contributions of nurses, police, teachers and so forth. But there are some important reasons the governor is right on the nurse-ratio and pension issues and the unions opposing him are wrong.

First, the government needs to live within its means, and it cannot promise pay and benefit levels (or contributions to health care facilities, public and private) beyond what can be reasonably afforded.

Second, the government cannot fix market problems by mandates and regulations that make it more difficult for the market to respond. With regard to health care, the goal should be to loosen up restrictions and promote competition rather than for legislators to micromanage operations of hospitals, especially down to the level of mandating staffing levels.

Third, whenever unions exert their muscle, the public and the economy take a beating.

That's true even in the private sector, where General Motors is facing its biggest loss since 1992 largely because of enormous pension costs as a result of union contracts. The pension demands are so high that GM has been unable to focus on developing new and better cars to sell to consumers and it is shortchanging shareholders.

Unfortunately, the governor has taken the worst of all approaches. He has riled the politically powerful unions, but has backed away from reforms that would help Californians and chip away at union power.

He delayed pension reform in response to police opposition and the attorney general's shameless mischaracterization of the initiative.

The governor is now negotiating away merit pay for public school teachers in exchange for "combat pay" for teachers who work in the toughest districts. Combat pay may be a good idea, but it doesn't reform the bureaucratic, mediocrity-rewarding, incompetence-protecting racket known as tenure, a key issue of concern to the union.

And as he loses his fight with nurses over staffing ratios, the CNA gets bolder and cockier even as staffing problems become more critical at California hospitals.

Too bad there's no union representing the interests of the general public.