Healthcare Union Fighting for More than Wages
Healthcare workers employed by Florida’s largest for-profit nursing homes and hospitals are uniting for quality care and quality jobs for all working Floridians.
MIAMI, FL – While workers all over the country at places like McDonalds and Wal-Mart are demonstrating for better wages and a fair piece of the pie, members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East Florida Division (1199SEIU Florida) are advancing a cause centered on ensuring that the best possible care is provided to residents and patients, as well as addressing the ever-growing income inequality that exists within Florida’s healthcare industry.
In the next four to six weeks, close to 15,000 healthcare workers across Florida will be demonstrating publicly through leafleting and community education, pickets and strikes. 1199SEIU Florida members and at HCA-affiliated hospitals around the state will be demonstrating as early as August 12, 2014.
“There is a dangerous trend growing within the healthcare industry in Florida”, Pat Diaz, rank and file member of 1199SEIU Executive Council and a practicing nurse with more than 20-years of experience. “Hospitals and nursing homes, especially for-profit, want to cut work hours and offer very little for wage increases. When caregivers’ hours are cut, that means less time at the bedside with patients and residents. We should all be alarmed by this trend.”
Caregivers are taking their cause outside of their hospitals and nursing homes and into their communities. This outreach is in response to the refusal by Florida’s multi-billion healthcare industry’s to share their profits with their employees, despite the fact that the lion’s share of their funding comes through public taxpayer funds. This alarming trend has become the nation’s litmus test for passing bad legislation that increases profit margins, while diminishing care. In fact, in a recent AARP report, Florida ranked in the bottom quartile in long-term care services and support (click to see report). A recent Miami Herald article shed light on the fact that some South Florida hospitals may be penalized by Medicare in the form of reduced payments for having above average instances of infections, bedsores, blood clots and other avoidable injuries (click here for Miami Herald article).
“We see it every day,” says Tina Hardy, a certified nursing assistant with more than 30 years of service at Arch Plaza nursing home. “Healthcare workers are driven further and further out of the decision-making process that impacts the lives of children, seniors, and our most vulnerable. The only way the medical industry can advance, and has advanced, is when frontline caregivers are front and center in shaping healthcare policy and medical processes.”
The members of 1199SEIU Florida, one of the fastest growing unions in the country, are battling corporate initiatives, like reducing supplies to save money, short staffing in high-acuity units, shortening of work days and a for profit structure that increasingly forces caregivers to do more with less at work and at home.
In June, caregivers at eight Greystone nursing homes reached an agreement to protect their eight-hour workday and provide 20-cent an hour raises every six months just days before a declared strike. Currently, 1199SEIU Florida members are in heated contract negotiations with 19 HCA-affiliated hospitals. There, workers are struggling to extract more from the company to lift the minimum wages of employees charged with reducing the spread of infections and who are in contact with bio-hazardous materials while earning a little more than $9 an hour. For HCA-affiliated healthcare workers, the struggle for higher wages is about more than bringing home a bigger paycheck, but also raising standards so that hospitals are able to attract and retain the highest qualified and most experienced healthcare staff. Nurses and other licensed caregivers also want the ability to follow the law for refusing work outside of their competency without the possibility of being disciplined.
The University of Miami Hospital and 1199SEIU Florida members entered into an agreement that strengthens our labor management partnership and provides bedside caregivers a stronger voice in the delivery of care. In its quest to deliver world-class care, the hospital agreed to implement a $10.10 minimum wage that will increase over the course of the next three years. They also agreed not to subcontract workers and continue a very successful training education fund with the union that promotes the career development and advancement of its employees within the hospital.
“1199SEIU healthcare workers are not selfish,” said Monica Russo, executive vice president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. “We are fighting for an economy that works for all Floridians. Our nursing home workers have advocated for a decade for increased staffing levels in order to improve quality care for the elderly. Our certified nurses’ aides and registered nurses led the campaign to sign up their neighbors for health insurance once we passed the Affordable Care Act, and are fierce advocates for the Expansion of Medicaid to one million Floridians. Our environmental and food service workers have challenged elected officials to live on minimum wage for a week in order to influence national and local policy. And now our members are preparing to go door to door in our communities to encourage folks to make their voices heard in this critical election cycle.”
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East Florida represents more than 25,000 nurses and healthcare workers throughout the state and 400,000 workers across Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, and Washington, D.C., 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is the largest and fastest-growing healthcare union in America. Our mission is to achieve affordable, high quality healthcare for all. 1199SEIU is part of the 2.1 million-member Service Employees International Union.
Healthcare workers employed by Florida’s largest for-profit nursing homes and hospitals are uniting for quality care and quality jobs for all working Floridians.
MIAMI, FL – While workers all over the country at places like McDonalds and Wal-Mart are demonstrating for better wages and a fair piece of the pie, members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East Florida Division (1199SEIU Florida) are advancing a cause centered on ensuring that the best possible care is provided to residents and patients, as well as addressing the ever-growing income inequality that exists within Florida’s healthcare industry.
In the next four to six weeks, close to 15,000 healthcare workers across Florida will be demonstrating publicly through leafleting and community education, pickets and strikes. 1199SEIU Florida members and at HCA-affiliated hospitals around the state will be demonstrating as early as August 12, 2014.
“There is a dangerous trend growing within the healthcare industry in Florida”, Pat Diaz, rank and file member of 1199SEIU Executive Council and a practicing nurse with more than 20-years of experience. “Hospitals and nursing homes, especially for-profit, want to cut work hours and offer very little for wage increases. When caregivers’ hours are cut, that means less time at the bedside with patients and residents. We should all be alarmed by this trend.”
Caregivers are taking their cause outside of their hospitals and nursing homes and into their communities. This outreach is in response to the refusal by Florida’s multi-billion healthcare industry’s to share their profits with their employees, despite the fact that the lion’s share of their funding comes through public taxpayer funds. This alarming trend has become the nation’s litmus test for passing bad legislation that increases profit margins, while diminishing care. In fact, in a recent AARP report, Florida ranked in the bottom quartile in long-term care services and support (click to see report). A recent Miami Herald article shed light on the fact that some South Florida hospitals may be penalized by Medicare in the form of reduced payments for having above average instances of infections, bedsores, blood clots and other avoidable injuries (click here for Miami Herald article).
“We see it every day,” says Tina Hardy, a certified nursing assistant with more than 30 years of service at Arch Plaza nursing home. “Healthcare workers are driven further and further out of the decision-making process that impacts the lives of children, seniors, and our most vulnerable. The only way the medical industry can advance, and has advanced, is when frontline caregivers are front and center in shaping healthcare policy and medical processes.”
The members of 1199SEIU Florida, one of the fastest growing unions in the country, are battling corporate initiatives, like reducing supplies to save money, short staffing in high-acuity units, shortening of work days and a for profit structure that increasingly forces caregivers to do more with less at work and at home.
In June, caregivers at eight Greystone nursing homes reached an agreement to protect their eight-hour workday and provide 20-cent an hour raises every six months just days before a declared strike. Currently, 1199SEIU Florida members are in heated contract negotiations with 19 HCA-affiliated hospitals. There, workers are struggling to extract more from the company to lift the minimum wages of employees charged with reducing the spread of infections and who are in contact with bio-hazardous materials while earning a little more than $9 an hour. For HCA-affiliated healthcare workers, the struggle for higher wages is about more than bringing home a bigger paycheck, but also raising standards so that hospitals are able to attract and retain the highest qualified and most experienced healthcare staff. Nurses and other licensed caregivers also want the ability to follow the law for refusing work outside of their competency without the possibility of being disciplined.
The University of Miami Hospital and 1199SEIU Florida members entered into an agreement that strengthens our labor management partnership and provides bedside caregivers a stronger voice in the delivery of care. In its quest to deliver world-class care, the hospital agreed to implement a $10.10 minimum wage that will increase over the course of the next three years. They also agreed not to subcontract workers and continue a very successful training education fund with the union that promotes the career development and advancement of its employees within the hospital.
“1199SEIU healthcare workers are not selfish,” said Monica Russo, executive vice president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. “We are fighting for an economy that works for all Floridians. Our nursing home workers have advocated for a decade for increased staffing levels in order to improve quality care for the elderly. Our certified nurses’ aides and registered nurses led the campaign to sign up their neighbors for health insurance once we passed the Affordable Care Act, and are fierce advocates for the Expansion of Medicaid to one million Floridians. Our environmental and food service workers have challenged elected officials to live on minimum wage for a week in order to influence national and local policy. And now our members are preparing to go door to door in our communities to encourage folks to make their voices heard in this critical election cycle.”
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East Florida represents more than 25,000 nurses and healthcare workers throughout the state and 400,000 workers across Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, and Washington, D.C., 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is the largest and fastest-growing healthcare union in America. Our mission is to achieve affordable, high quality healthcare for all. 1199SEIU is part of the 2.1 million-member Service Employees International Union.
