Dear Colleagues,

Members of the Federation of Nurses/UFT joined other unions in Albany on May 12 to urge the passage of three critical health and safety bills. The message was loud and clear as thousands of nurses joined together in a sea of turquoise T-shirts in support of a critical change in patient care.

The proposed legislation would protect our patients and require safe staffing by implementing nurse-patient staffing ratios, requiring every school statewide to have a nurse assigned daily and expanding the current prohibition on mandatory overtime for hospital nurses to include home-care nurses as well.

The following bills were the focus of our health care professionals lobby day:

Safe Staffing Ratios for Quality Care Act A.1548 Gottfried/S.782 Hannon (Health):

• Requires that applications for an acute-care facility include a staffing plan for registered nurses
• Establishes minimum nurse-to-patient ratios
• Requires mandatory compliance with staffing plans
• Establishes increased civil penalties for noncompliance
• Sets standards for public disclosure of staffing standards

Mandatory Overtime Hours Worked by Home-Care Nurses A.1127 Gunther (Labor)/S.3100 Ritchie (Labor): 

• Restricts consecutive hours of required work by nurses in the home-care setting except in the case of an emergency; does not prohibit a nurse from voluntarily working overtime
• When the anti-mandatory overtime bill was signed into law (Ch.493 of the laws of 2008), home-care nurses were unjustly excluded. This legislation seeks to grant them the same protections against mandatory overtime abuse that other New York state nurses enjoy.

Minimum School Nurse Staffing Standards A.1497 Gunther (Education)/S.1755 Robach (Education): 

• Requires school districts in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers and Syracuse to employ at least one school nurse per school building
• Requires each district to consult with a professional nursing association to determine the need for additional staff beyond the one-nurse minimum

We thank everyone who traveled to Albany to lobby for these critical bills.

In unity,

Lila Shams, RN
Federation of Nurses/UFT

Anne Goldman, RN
UFT Vice President for Non-DOE Members