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

Advocates from across the state penned a letter to Maryland House and Senate leaders Monday, imploring them to convene a special session to address a slew of problems Marylanders are facing as 2020 wears on.

The school-based licensed mental health professionals of the Department of Behavioral Health School Mental Health Program stand in solidarity with the Washington Teachers Union’s call to only reopen schools when it is safe.

I, do hereby give to 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, their successors and assigns, my permission to use pictures made of me and comments made by me on this date in video tapes, printed material, digital media, advertisements, and any other materials without payment to me for such use. I will make no monetary or other claim against 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East for the use of the pictures and/or comments. I further agree to indemnify and hold harmless 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, their successors and assigns, from and against any and all liability that might arise out of any use or publication of said comments and pictures.

Today we welcome 29 new members at Vassar Brothers Medical Center into the 1199SEIU family. They are joining hundreds of fellow members at the hospital and elsewhere in the Hudson Valley, who have already negotiated some of the best pay and benefits in the country.

In the battle against COVID-19 there are legions of heroes. Every day, essential workers demonstrated for the world what exemplary care and compassion look like.

1199SEIU members from Upstate New York to South Florida held a union wide lunchtime walkout on June 11 to demand police reform and justice for victims of police violence. During the walkout, tens of thousands of workers gathered outside their facilities and took a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck and suffocated him to death.

A lot of people may not recognize Suzette Roberts as a hero. She doesn’t wear scrubs or a stethoscope. There haven’t been vivid images of her and her co-workers struggling through hospital hallways. But she is a hero, nevertheless.

As the COVID-19 crisis engulfed New York City, the relentless whine of sirens drowned out the lockdown induced silence on the city’s streets. New Yorkers faced staggering death tolls and renewed pressure on long existing disparities

Even before New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, its Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system was the busiest in the nation. But as the virus took hold on New York City, the system was quickly overwhelmed. What was an ember in early March raged into a wildfire just two weeks later. The number of emergency calls rose from about 4,000 a day to 7,000. The usual monthly toll of cardiac arrests was being reached in less than a week.

Dental Assistants from Union Community Health Center (UCHC) in the Bronx, which is affiliated with nearby St. Barnabas Hospital (SBH) rallied May 26 to celebrate their reinstatement and press St. Barnabas for crisis pay. The UCHC dental assistants were sent to St. Barnabas when their clinic closed in the surge of the COVID-19 crisis. Instead of being assigned work for which they were appropriately trained, they were given tasks far beyond their scope of work, including working with psychiatric patients and moving dead bodies. When they complained,