The vote had to do with how work hours are scheduled in one particular unit of a county-run hospital. The unit is a mixed group of social workers and nurses who perform essentially the same jobs but are in different bargaining units. The vote involved just the social work union. The sides can be described as "For" a formalized agreement about how to handle scheduling and "Against" that agreement. The issue is too complex to explain fully here, so I will summarize. For wanted to continue handling the schedule in a way that works well for most of them but violates official union rules. Against wanted to stop doing the schedule this way and have management find some other way to schedule hours in accordance with union rules. Feelings about this issue had run high for many years, with heated disagreements and several grievances filed. This vote was to be a final decision on this issue, putting it to rest once and for all.
Even though the vote would affect only a small group of workers in the union, by rules it had to be voted upon by the whole membership. (That means, by whoever showed up at the meeting.) Both sides recruited workers—including me, a former member of this group—to attend the meeting and vote. My strong ties of affection to the group compelled me to participate.
I was solidly in the For camp when, on the day of the vote, I spoke with an Against member and found myself sympathetic to her concerns and struggles. After our meeting, I cast a horary chart for the question, "How will the vote go?" (June 3, 2010, 4:12 p.m. CDT Milwaukee, WI)
At the time I was favoring Against. In the chart, then, Against gets Lord 1, Venus ("us"). For gets Mars, Lord 7 ("them"). We analyze this as we would a contest horary: Who will win? As you may recall from past blog posts, we are looking for which planet is strongest.
Venus is peregrine at 17.40 Cancer in the 9th. Mars is in its own terms at 28.15 Leo, in the 10th house. Mars has more dignity, although not by much. However, when we calculate antiscia, we see that antiscion Sun, 16.49 Cancer, is conjunct Venus. This makes Venus combust by antiscia and is a second testimony that Venus is weaker than Mars. Venus, Against, will lose the vote. This is exactly what happened just a few hours later when the vote actually took place.
As I listened to the arguments during the meeting, I found myself solidly back in the For camp. Strangely, I did not note the exact time of the vote—I was so absorbed in the debate that I forgot! My best estimate afterwards was 6:30 p.m. Here is the chart for the vote itself (June 3, 2010, 6:30 p.m. CDT, Milwaukee, WI):
We analyze this chart as we do a sports event chart. Who is favored to win? It seemed that many members had turned out to support For, so in this chart I gave them Lord 1 and Lord 10 as the favorites. Lord 1 is Mars, representing For just as in the horary chart. Against is Lord 7, Venus. In event charts we don't analyze strength in the same way we do for contest horaries. Luckily, this chart gives us clear testimony of the winner. Lord 10, For's success, is just outside cusp 7. As Frawley teaches, a planet on the cusp of a house controls that house. For wins--and in fact they did, by a margin of nine votes.
To summarize, we have two charts that tell us the same thing, one a contest horary and one a contest event chart. Interestingly, the significators were the same in both charts—Mars For, Venus Against. Although I changed sides in the course of a few hours, the charts were consistent.
And so the issue was decided—or maybe not. I just heard through the grapevine that the nurses are having their own meeting soon. As a For member put it, "That battle has ended, but not the war." Here's wishing for a final peace agreement soon.
