Statement of Milly Silva, Executive Vice President, on Supreme Court DAPA/DACA decision

Members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest healthcare union in the U.S, are proud to join their SEIU Florida partners to endorse a slate of more than 60 candidates for the 2022 primary and general election. Topping the list are Charlie Crist for governor, Val Demings for U.S. Senate and Aramis Ayala for attorney general. If they win, Demings and Ayala would become the first African American women to serve in these positions.

“As a union of healthcare workers, we recognize that the right to an abortion is fundamental to reproductive health, overall health, and bodily autonomy. 1199SEIU is appalled that the US Supreme Court has erased half a century of legal precedent allowing people to make the most basic decisions about their bodies, lives, and families. While much of the world is moving forward to secure greater reproductive rights, we have taken a tremendous step backward.

“As so many of us have feared, the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court have reversed Roe vs. Wade, gutting reproductive freedoms, protections and healthcare for tens of millions of women in the United States. This will be especially tragic in states such as Florida with a legislature and governor who already have passed radical and intrusive limitations on women’s freedom and right to self-determination.

Weeks before his death in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed 1199’s Salute to Freedom Celebration at which he praised the Union for its “labor power plus soul power” strategy. Dr. King also called for a “massive civil disobedience campaign against economic inequality.”

Hanna Duda has been an 1199 homecare worker with the Personal Touch agency for 22 years, since she first arrived in New York from Ukraine. She became a US citizen as soon as she could and quickly applied for family-sponsored visas for her daughters, Liliya Kupchyshyna and Halyna Palis. It took ten years for her youngest daughter, Palis, to be allowed to join her.

Doreen Barnett believes that most childhood fears can be overcome if parents simply devote a little bit of time to providing age-appropriate explanations.

As the country commemorated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, the Union took the opportunity to honor the thousands of AAPI members in its ranks.

When family emergency strikes, most people will spend whatever it takes to get them through the tough times and worry about paying the bills later.

Between them, the 125 staff members who work in the Food and Nutrition department at Maimonides Medical Center in South Brooklyn serve roughly 500 meals a day, both at the bedside and in the cafeteria. The hospital complex is the largest in Brooklyn, the most populous of New York City’s five boroughs.

Maura Healey, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, has won the members’ endorsement in her bid to become the state’s next governor.