Thank you Local Union Leaders

Imagine being a nurse, finishing a full shift, having babies at home and a partner who needs to hand them off to you so they can get to work, and being told you have no replacement and could be disciplined and even fired if you don’t stay an extra shift.
This happens at hospitals all the time.

I want to give a shout out to the #union leaders who advocate for their coworkers on this and so many other vital issues.

Yesterday, Backus Nurses Prez Sherri Dayton Calixte and VP Jessica Harris faced just such a scenario.

Backus Hospital had been unable to fill all the open spots during this holiday season. Their solution was to mandate.

Sherri and Jess asked for an emergency meeting with management and within a couple of hours had worked out an incentive program to decrease the need to mandate.

We owe a big debt of gratitude to all our AFT Nurses & Health Professionals.

We owe an additional debt of gratitude to the AFT Connecticut Local Leaders and AFT - American Federation of Teachers Local Leaders in all the states and territories who advocate for their union members who care for patients, educate students , and serve the public.

Dedication means working Christmas

This is a picture of some very fine Backus Nurses and their labor and delivery coworkers who spent Christmas Day bringing life into the world. 

This scene was repeated in other departments throughout the hospital and at hospitals across this country. 

AFT Nurses & Health Professionals were there to help babies be born, to help sick patients get well, to help injured survive and heal, and when they could not do that, they were there to help families grieve. 

It’s what they do, not only on Christmas, but every hour of every day of the year.  

They work all hours of the day and night. 

They work through breaks and lunches and stay late when needed. 

They are verbally assaulted, spit at, punched and kicked. 

And yet, they ask little in return, just a voice in their practice, respect and safety in the workplace, and the freedom to care for their patients. 

Like our AFT Connecticut educators and public employees, our healthcare professionals have dedicated themselves to the people they serve, their patients, students and public.

The real Truth-Tellers

In a recent article titled “Listen to the truth-tellers,” AFT President Randi Weingarten writes about being grateful to the educators, healthcare professionals, and public employees in our lives but goes on to say,  “Let’s also listen to the teachers and nurses in our lives. They are the truth-tellers who can reveal things we need to know about our country”

I thought about that this week as I sat in a labor management meeting at my home local, Backus Nurses, as Sherri and Jessica so passionately and eloquently advocated for our members. 

At one point, the discussion turned to the fact that Hartford Healthcare management (Hartford Healthcare owns Backus Hospital) was going around the floors and telling nurses that the reason they were not getting the year end bonus was “because of the union!”

Sherri called it what it is,

UNION BUSTING!

The truth of the matter is that Hartford Healthcare gives a bonus to non-union employees, and in the past has given it to union members. The bonus amount is totally at the discretion of management and can be changed or eliminated at any time.

The truth is also that management is free to give the bonus to the hardworking union nurses, who deserve it as much as anyone, certainly more than the UNION BUSTING management.

They just don’t want to.

Last year, Hartford Healthcare offered the bonus to the union nurses, but only if they gave away their right to bargain healthcare. 

It was a nonsense offer.

And the nurses rightful rejected it.

Giving away the right to have a say in their healthcare plan for a few hundred dollars that can be eliminated at Hartford Healthcare’s whim wasn’t a real offer,

It was an insult.

Sherri didn’t argue that Hartford Healthcare was required to give the bonus. (that’s an argument for another day) She argued that management’s attempt to paint “the union” as the bad guy was a blatant attempt to BUST THE UNION and was an insult to every nurse. 

The nurses are Backus not idiots, although Hartford Healthcare seems to think they are.

They are intelligent and gifted caregivers who have dedicated their lives to the care of others and deserve our upmost respect and certainly, as Randi said in her article, to be listened to.

Hartford Healthcare likes to talk about it’s “core values” of Caring, Safety, Excellence and Integrity.

I’m sorry,

I don’t see it.

I don’t see it in how they treat our nurses at Backus hospital.

I don’t see it in how they treat our therapists, our nurses, our teachers, our teacher assistants at Natchaug Hospital.

I don’t see it in how they treat our nurses, our technicians and technologists, and out Healthcare Workers at Windham Hospital.

I wish I did see it.

I hear it when I talk to HR people or the Hartford Healthcare regional President.

I just don’t see it.

You know what I do see?

I see what AFT president Randi Weingarten sees.

I see what AFT CT President Jan Hochadel sees.

I see what the 30,000 AFT CT and 1.7 million AFT members see.

I see what our grateful patients and students see.

I see incredibly intelligent and dedicated educators and healthcare providers who are not respected by Hartford Healthcare.

Our members who work in healthcare, in education, and in public service….

They are the truth-tellers.

Thank you

Thank you members of AFT Connecticut for allowing me to do what I do.

Thank you teachers, PSRPs, and those in higher education for the dedication you have to future generations. 

Thank you public employees for the safety and services you provide us all, often without any recognition.

Please know that you are appreciated.

Also, please allow me a moment of personal privilege to address our sisters and brothers that are nurses and healthcare professions, especially those still laboring at the bedside.

While I was enjoying turkey and stuffing, many of you were at work.

True, I put in my years of doing it, but that only makes my gratitude to you deeper.

Recently, nurses and healthcare professionals were recognized for heroic work at a Gala at one of our hospitals.

This week came not one, but two articles, from two of our other hospitals, of heroic work by our Healthcare members to deliver a baby in the parking lot and to care for people with compassion in the ED.

But also came the story of yet another one of our nurses being viscously assaulted.

Nurses and healthcare professionals will go out of their way to stop and help a patient (even after they have clocked out) and consider it just a part of the job.

They will be threatened and assaulted daily and just consider it part of the job.

They will be late getting home to family on a regular basis because all hell is breaking out at work and they just can’t in good conscious leave, and consider it part of the job.

Unfortunately, almost daily our nurses and heath professionals are also berated and disciplined by managers for the smallest of things, like punching a time clock 1 minute late, like briefly speaking to each other at the nurses station about an upcoming union meeting, like standing up for themselves, their colleagues, and their patients.

This cannot be part of the job.

Your dedication and commitment to our profession and our patients comes from deep within. If they take that from us, they have taken everything.

We deserve, and we must demand, the respect we are owed. 

Mostly, we must demand it of ourselves.

As nurses, we often cite the Nightingale Pledge. Others in healthcare cite similar pledges or creeds.

In them, we pledge to do everything in our power to elevate our professions and to be dedicated to our work and the welfare of those in our care.

At the core of this, at the core of safe staffing levels, of safety in the workplace, of the freedom to care, is a moral code that demands that we demand respect.

It will not be given to us freely, experience teaches us this.

We must and we will take it. 

In solidarity and love I thank you for your dedication my sisters and brothers.

HR 1309 Workplace Violence Protection for Healthcare and Social Service Workers passed US House!

Back when I was a kid, Saturday morning was a time to longe in our PJs and watch cartoons. Between cartoons was a thing called “Schoolhouse Rock,” which put educational lessons to video. One of them was a short video called “I’m just a bill.” Where a bill describes the process to become a law.

This week, in the United Staes House of.Representatives, HR 1309 Workplace Violence Protection for Healthcare Workers and Social Workers Act took a big step on that journey.

What started as an idea among healthcare and social service workers, based on the violence we face on the job daily, based on our co-workers and ourselves being victims of such violence, based on a lack of adequate response from employers and a lack of jurisdictional authority by OSHA, HR 1309 passed the House on a 250-159 vote!

What started as an idea from many sources, but particularly from AFT nurses and healthcare workers, was picked up and championed by my Congressman, Joe Courtney, of eastern Connecticut’s 2nd district. Our members were joined by AFT members from across the country, and by members of other unions and advocacy groups, who spoke to their congressmen and senators, who wrote, who testified, who visited them in DC and in their home districts, who helped them understand the importance of this legislation. Now, just like in School House Rock, our bill moves to the Senate, where Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin it’s championing S 851, it’s companion bill which awaits action. That bill has 29 cosponsors, including both of Connecticut’s Senators.
What can you do?
Check the list on the link of cosponsors. Check the list of who voted in favor in the House.
If your Senator is a cosponsor, thank them.
If not, ask them why not.
If your Representaitve voted in favor, thank them.
If not, ask them why not.
At a time when so much is partisan in DC, this bill received bipartisan support with 33 republican votes.
It took 7 years to get our bill this far (and its still just a Bill) but the work of Congressman Courtney and the advocacy of AFT members and others works!
This bill will establish mandatory training in deescalation and self protection techniques, worksite rules, physical barriers, etc that will make a difference in the lives of caregivers and patients.
The day of the House vote I contacted Joe Courtney’s office to thank them. I also sent them some information on a similar and growing  problem of violence in classrooms that we need to work on.
I told them, “I know, the work never ends.”
But Government works when we engage.
It worked this week.