General News

Nurses celebrate how far they’ve come

by Ellie Spielberg

Dec 6, 2007 12:27 PM

At the start of the Federation of Nurses/UFT 22nd annual Professional Issues Conference, more than 200 participants — people who give round-the-clock care to young and old, rich and poor, in hospitals and schools, homes and hospices — stood up together and sang “Health Care Workers Are United,” to the tune of “Solidarity Forever.”

Now the ER’s overcrowded and the staff is all stressed out.

Longer hours, tighter money’s not what caring is about.

We are here to say it loud and clear, and even shout it out,

Let’s save our health care now!

For these RNs and LPNs, who gave up precious time off on Nov. 16 and 17 for professional development and to celebrate how far they’d come, it was not an old-time feel-good union song, but a very real description of what they deal with day in and day out.

Despite many wins over the past 27 years, they still struggle for higher health care standards and wages and better working conditions as the industry grows increasingly bottom-line oriented and competitive.

The issues at Staten Island University Hospital South are “short staffing and the use of mandatory overtime,” said Nancy DiGizulio, making her way through the exhibit hall at the Helmsley Hotel.

“For a lot of nurses the main issue is overtime without overtime pay but per diem, because overtime goes toward pension,” said Zelma Perez-Sandy of Visiting Nurse Services.

At Lutheran Medical Center, the problems are understaffing, bigger workloads and more patients to care for, according to Monica E. McKain. “The end result is that they’re skimping and it’s patient care that suffers,” added her colleague Rose Ubanwa.

“Health care is the biggest business in the country and there’s a lot of profit in sick people staying sick,” said the UFT’s Anne Goldman from the podium. A registered nurse and special representative for the UFT affiliate for 28 years, Goldman added that “the only people committed to turning that around each and every day is us. It begins with you at the bedside, in the schools, in homes, offering people the best opportunity to regain their health no matter their race, illness, sexuality or the depth of their pockets.

“Each of you has the talent and skill to work with a child afraid of getting a shot, to change the dressing of someone in pain, to educate families on how to administer medication, how to bring a loved one through — including families whose members most people walk by on the street with no concern whatsoever,” Goldman said.

Her fellow nurses cheered and hollered as Goldman called out: “Each of you is the voice of patient advocacy! We don’t want adequate care; we want excellence! There is no mediocrity in nursing!

“Whatever site we work at, the issue is always understaffing. The struggle is always one of the union battling management for the working conditions we need to do our jobs well,” she added.

After stressing that the union contract is crucial to better patient care, Goldman introduced UFT President Randi Weingarten, “who responds to our needs and has consistently brought us on-time contracts.”

Weingarten began by expressing her amazement at the work nurses do, which had hit home for her more than ever during a recent family illness, and thanked them for practicing their profession.

Speaking of “the relentless attacks of corporate interests against labor and the need of labor to organize and increase its ranks,” she updated the audience on the teachers’ struggles as well as their triumphs, such as winning pension tier equity, the successful organizing campaigns with home child care providers and with administrative law judges, and for “closing the door” on divisive, individual merit pay, replacing it with a voluntary schoolwide pilot bonus program that emphasizes collaboration.

Thanking members from Lutheran Medical Center, who were prepared to strike and therefore brought management around over pension issues, Weingarten pledged to continue to win and back up contracts for the nurses and highlighted the workplace status at various sites:

• In preparing for a March 1, 2008, contact expiration at Staten Island University Hospital South, the biggest challenges continue to be staffing and mandatory overtime. A series of potential settlements are being negotiated to help frame guidelines to keep employers from ignoring their obligation to prevent a short-staffing crisis.
• Negotiations at Visiting Nurse Services of New York yielded a three-year contract that included health benefits paid fully by the employer and improved retiree termination benefits. Per Diem nurses whose computers crash and who have to come to the office for more that one occurrence within 15 calendar days no longer lose money because of high-tech mechanical problems. They won the higher hourly rate.
• At Queens Congregate Care, grievances were filed and won over improper distribution of work and overtime; an overwork situation was also corrected in the Brooklyn region.
• Grievances for unpaid overtime and unpaid differential pay were won at Jewish Home and Hospital.
• The fight with the Department of Education continues for school nurses to have parity with all school employees on winter and spring holidays, increases in experience differentials, additional longevity steps and tuition reimbursement.

Weingarten closed by saying that no matter what the union could gain for its members and for improvements in the health care system on a local level, “We can’t change existing problems in this country without the right president in the White House.

“Political action is union business, which is why the AFT and the UFT have endorsed Hillary Clinton, who stands for working people, not for the rich, and who stands for quality health care for all in America,” she said.

The political fight for better health care took center stage in the afternoon panel discussion, “The Politics of Health Care Issues.”

A host of workshops were on tap covering an array of professional issues, including advanced critical care nursing, acupuncture in contemporary health care, recovering from anesthesia, new trends in the treatment of diabetes and an update for school nurses.

“Today is a time to network, to avail yourselves of professional development,” Goldman said. “It’s a time to relax, to network as a professional; it’s a day away from the fire, away from the constant state of crises that is your everyday work environment.”