The Union Election That Could Change Everything, Part 2

Raina, Eric, and John from Shift Change discuss their vision for what National Nurses United could be and how a democratic and responsible union can build power for everyone.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to it could happen here. We now continue
our conversation with the team from Shift Change Enjoy. Outside
of the obvious, the union is doing landlordism for some reason,
part which is just sort of I can't get over, like, well,
what do you what do you mean her forty four
billion dollars? The thing you're doing is being a landlord.
But yeah, I mean it seems like they're you know,

(00:26):
like out of one side of their mouth saying this
is a democratic union. In their side of their mouth,
they're doing political purges. They're like doing everything possible to
make sure people don't know how the democratic process works,
which I think is a pretty like basic precept of
democracy is that if if if it's impossible to figure
out how the system actually works, it's not it's not

(00:48):
it's not actually a democracy in any real sense. Yeah,
and you know, yeah, And this is the thing you're saying,
is like they see they seem to be acting like bosses,
like they're firing people. They get nervous when people start organizing,
which is not a thing that you would think a
union would be ecstatic if it's like, oh hey there's

(01:08):
this winter's like organized themselves I don't know, it's just
I mean, there's a there's a there's a mentality inside
among some people and even among some of the nurses
that like, you know, when people are causing problems or
you know, it's the Yeah, it's it's a very it's
a very perplexing situation to be in, and many of

(01:32):
us it's taken us years to really figure it out,
because you don't we all come to work right to
do our job, you know, I don't come to work
to like figure out every like little nuanced thing about
what's going on inside my union. I didn't become a
union nurse because I wanted to be like a hero
union member. I did it because it was down the

(01:52):
street and it was a good job, and like I
wanted to be a nurse more than anything in the world.
So you know, this is but this is what we do,
and this is why things like labor notes and learning
how your union works is really important. We've been self
educating ourselves. Like it's almost like you have to become
a jail house lawyer, right, yeah, Like yeah, we've been

(02:14):
sharing our favorite resources for like how do you learn
about how union works or what your rights are and
like we're basically taking notes for what we're going to
have to do when we if we get in power
inside the union to educate all the nurses in our union.
One of the things a little too. I mean, every
time I talk with people about this to try and
give little tips and tricks. Don't leave your staff are

(02:37):
a loan in a at the negotiating table. They'll tell
you everything's going great, go get go, get some dinner,
and you come back and you can't do regressive bargaining.
You can't unbargain like a thing when someone's been empowered
to decide something for you. And this is where especially
new new units in in countries or parts of the

(02:59):
country with strong union culture are finding that they'll step
away from the bargaining table and they'll come back and
all these decisions will be made that they don't have
any you can't go back on it. It's like literally
no basis in like in union negotiations. No, and so
there's no such thing as regressive bargaining. If I offer,

(03:20):
if I say that I want a you know, you
offer a fifty percent increase in fifty cent an hour
increase for floating to another union unit, I can't turn
around and you can't offer me forty five cents the
next go round. You cannot go back if you said

(03:42):
fifty percent, it has to be you know, more than
fifty percent on the next offer, or you just say
that's my final offer. So you know, the idea of
regressive bargaining is I have to tell you it's amazing,
is that when we negotiate against Sutter in twenty eleven
through twenty thirteen, we had multiple cases of ulps filed

(04:06):
for regressive bargaining on their part. They constantly made these
mistakes which we as nurses and the labor reps caught.
And now for us, it's so important that we don't
regressive bargain regressive bargaining on our own members here. We

(04:29):
need to be moving forward. We should be making quantum
leaps and bounds as nurses. Well, what we've gone through,
we're supposedly the most trusted profession in the country. I
think it's for the past twenty years. The only time
we have not been the most progressive or the most

(04:49):
respected profession was in two thousand and one. And you
can obviously guess that it was firemen. It was firemen,
But it's like twenty five years or so in a row,
we've been the most trusted profession. It's because, you know,
how can you not trust somebody who's cleaning you up
when you soiled yourself in the bed, who's holding your

(05:13):
hand when you're scared. That's why we're the most trusted profession,
and we should be the most respected for what we do.
It's just amazing that our union can't carry us through that.
Our union was formed in a revolution that we overthrew

(05:35):
and kicked out management nurses and formed the California Nurses Association,
the bargaining part of the organization. The association broke away
from the management part and we twirled her at all
as a wonderful example somebody who was part of that revolution.

(05:56):
And for about twenty over twenty some years, we were
a rapidly progressive union. We didn't have all the rank
and file things that we should have had in the union,
but it was in the right direction for nurses. And
we've kind of made in the past ten years this

(06:18):
U turn and the Association, which I think is bad
for nurses. We need to be going forward, and we
have new nurses and new a new generation that is
joining the union and they need to be a part
of it. And they can't look at me and say

(06:40):
that that old fogi that's you know, been in the
union for thirty some years. You know that I'll be
doing the work for them. They need to be active
in that union and they need to love the idea
of solidarity, you know, out of the fires of desperation,
burn hope and solidarity. It was one of the ladies said,
I think sharing Borough from Australia, an Australian labor activists,

(07:04):
said that we need to have every union member. I
don't think every one of them has to be rabbit
about it, but they should be aware that they need
to stand tall and support each other, and not just
even they need to support the non union nurses they
need to get. We need to get more nurses unionized.

(07:26):
The problem with unions is there's not enough unions out there.
There's not enough people in the unions. We need to
get more nurses unionized and our union hasn't been able
to do that in quite a while. We haven't We've
been raiding a lot of other unions, but we need
to get out there and get people in the South unionized.

(07:52):
We need to get other nurses and you know in
the Midwest organized that aren't unionized yet, we have a
bigger vision as bedside nurses, and I think that our
our national union has I'm only as strong as the
person next to me. I need support. As John said, Yeah,
we're four people running for the Council of Presidents, but

(08:17):
behind us, there's there's so many nurses supporting us. Nurses
are texting me all the time, Hey, give me some pliers,
give me some buttons. I want to pass them out.
It's it's important for us. I know we're we're at
a disadvantage we don't have. You know, the people were

(08:38):
running against even though it's illegal for them to have
the union promote them, they're obviously going to have that
advantage like a city president, because they're going to be
in the National Nurse magazine, going around the country, you know,
doing the things they do as sitting presidents, so they're
going to get that free publicity. I wish our union

(09:02):
presidents went around the country because as far as I know,
they've never come here at Chicago. Yeah, I think the
only time we beg to Chicago's when we had that
People Power convention there and that was my first visit
back to Chicago, and I think ten years was when
I went there. And it's amazing. Is it should be

(09:24):
our union should rotate, rotate where they have their their
their conventions. They should we should be all around the country.
We should be going to the south and having conventions
so that we can attract people. Um. I think it's important.
We need to make inroads. You know, I know a

(09:46):
lot of it is they're going to say the pandemic,
and I think the pandemic did hasten this siloing, and
you know, some of it was a little understandable. But
even when it is evident that they should have come
out of the borough, they never did. The people have

(10:07):
been saying how tired they are from the pandemic, right, Like,
I don't know how they could have been tired, but
the union could have been tired when they were just
having zoom calls. No, No, the nurses are saying that
they're tired. Like But here's what's interesting. This is a
thing that I'm seeing in real time as we're doing

(10:28):
this work, is that nurses who have been exhausted and
some of the most beat down, like like nurses who
are like in the worst situations here in Chicago, are tired.
But then they hear something interesting is going on with
the union that is actually something that they have a
say in, which is very unusual in our union, and

(10:52):
people get very excited. So I'm having coworkers coming up
to me who are the least interested in union business
until maybe it's time for a strike. And you know,
it's interesting because like when we did our strike organizing
twenty nineteen, the first strike in Chicago's of nurses in

(11:13):
like forty years in Chicago. You know, they kept it
would call these small kind of symbolic actions, and they
call them stress tests or structure tests for like, you know,
we're going to do We're going to do a press
conference and you have like, you know, a handful of
nurses come out for the press conference. He like ten
or fifteen nurses would come out and they're like, oh,

(11:34):
they're all wringing their hands. And then we start started
calling pickets and then we start blowing past our turnout numbers.
And then when we did our strike, they were expecting
eight hundred nurses with twelve fourteen hundred nurses, more nurses
than ever been in anyone place in our hospital like
it was like a giant party. So it's kind of

(11:55):
like when people have know that there's something that really
has like they has a stake in, right, there's an
infinite amount of energy almost and this election is really
kind of like we can't make the buttons fast enough
to give away, like they keep people keep coming up
and they're like, here, give me a handful. I've got

(12:16):
coworkers and we're doing there's you know, let's get the
pictures of everyone with their nurse with their with their
shift change buttons vote shift change, and you know, we're
turning that stuff into we're getting ramped up and prepared
for like our social media like outreach, and this is
part of it, is like getting people to see like, hey,

(12:37):
there are people out there who want to do something
different and that put you, like as a as a
bedside nurse, this is our opportunity to get you into
the driver's seat of how your union is run, how
strikes are called, how we negotiate, Like we want to
have a council of hospitals in contract campaigns, it's just

(12:57):
nurses from negotiating teams so that they can all so
we can coordinate and decide when we want to go
on strike, and it's not someone who's never been a
nurse making that call for us, Yeah, which seems just

(13:21):
baffling that you'd have some random person who hasn't been
a nurse making strike decisions to that, I mean, the
fact that it's not also just there seems like there's
such an enormous gap between the things you would just
basically fundamentally expect a union to be doing and what's
actually happening, which has nothing to do with that, And
it's just the sort of I mean it almost it
seems like like intentional dubobilization. Well, they want to treat

(13:44):
us like a spigot, like like you can turn us
on and turn us off. You know. The problem is
is that people don't respond to that well, and you
kind of constantly have to be honing your practice through
defending the contract, which is a big thing that like
a lot of my coworkers are just constantly annoyed at
that the contract we're not defending. Our chief nurse rep

(14:07):
is always annoyed that she can only scrape together you know,
four or five people, and you know I do it
and I'm not like I'm really good when I'm in
the room with You know, I my coworkers think that
I do a good job, but you know, when it
comes time to like doing all of the reading and
everything to make sure it's done, I need. You know,
It's the thing that I'm always working on and trying

(14:28):
to get better at. But you know, the that is
kind of the lifeblood of trade unionism is like, if
you're going to have a contract, you need to in
between contract barting campaigns where you can go on strike,
you need to be constantly probing and pushing and finding
where the weak spots are and keeping people in the
practice of like fighting. And if you do that and

(14:51):
you're really effective at it, you can affect some pretty
impressive changes in between contracts. When our friends was was
the labor rep at Cooke County, they went from having
maybe like ten people doing like the rep work to

(15:11):
over sixty people doing the rep work. She partnered with
a really phenomenal chief nurse Rep who had a family
Her dad had been president of a SEIU local, and
they were they had pushed so hard that they were
able to to open negotiations for attention bonuses, which after

(15:36):
you've settled a contract is like to open something on economics,
like on the order of fifteen, fifteen or ten thousand
dollars retention bonuses is a huge deal. Yea. The problem
was is that that then they fired her when she
connected us at Cooke County or the nurses at Cook
County with nurses at University of Chicago and we started

(15:59):
comparing no with what our staff were like, and their
chief nurse reps started asking the director of bargaining, who's
not a nurse and has never been a nurse, to say,
why is it that we are bringing in Why is
my facility bringing in four million dollars worth of dues?
And we get like, you know, two hundred twenty thousand

(16:19):
dollars worth maybe of staff, Like what's the deal? And
why is it that we don't spend any money on
arbitration or any of the stuff. They're constantly afraid of
doing anything. And that's when they fired Natalie and then
and now they're down to they're trying to whittle those
those nurses retention bonus negotiations down to like three thousand
and four thousand bucks from like fifteen thousands. You know,

(16:42):
you bring in the right people, and all of a sudden,
management has to like hire in like an entire legal
extra legal department at coocounting Health Services. It's not it's
not that somebody is not a nurse. That doesn't matter.
That was not a nurse, yet she was an outstanding

(17:03):
example what a labor rep should be. An organizer. Yeah,
I mean she you stand with the workers. I just
I do believe that we need more nurses involved in
in organizing and inside the union. But I have no
issues with you know, when you have labor reps like Natalie,

(17:26):
that's that's what you need to keep the union thriving.
And unfortunately, to cut her down when she was making
inroads to really empower nurses and the union was it's
just beyond the pale to make that decision. Why they
made that decision is something that I think if we

(17:49):
won the presidency, we'd want to find out why was
that decision made because a big part of this is
holding the staff accountable is our big thing. Like we
just need to know at right now there's no accountability
to so imagine having a job where like if you
are a nurse, Like if we're speaking to our coworkers

(18:10):
right now, imagine being a nurse and no one ever
checking your charting. No one ever checking what a patient
has to say about the care they got. No one
asking a doctor like what you did during a shift right, um?
No one checking you're like to see if like all
of your vital signs are actually really reflected in like
the monitor. That's the situation that we're dealing with staff

(18:32):
right now. No one who's outside of their staff bosses
at the director level has they're they're only accountable to
those people, and they are only accountable and they're not
actually accountable. They just write like they write everything themselves.
They write their own reports. They get they you know,

(18:52):
they'll take you know, a nurse will come up with
a good idea, they'll run it up the flag pole.
Check out this awesome idea have, boss. I mean, it
sounds like a downer I guess is like it all
sounds very like this is all grim and like depressing.
But the fact is is that we are at a
point now where we see what's going on and what

(19:13):
we need to do. We've been educating ourselves about what
can be done to change the union because the union
is a democratic structure, even in like just the shell
form of it, and as nurses We've got a lot
of faith that as nurses, we can figure this out
and come up with a much better, more democratic way
to run our union, and I think it will fundamentally

(19:34):
be a much stronger organization. I think that's the fear
is that somehow we like, you know, some people are like, oh,
you're you're gonna make it worse. It's like, I don't
know that you can make it worse if, like, you know,
there's the healthcare industry is changing. I think we're seeing
this in real time as a healthcare industry is changing,
and we are seeing to the you know, you have

(19:58):
hospitals that come up with the most cutting edged version
of healthcare, like the Universe Chicago, or the university systems
out in California, or maybe like Stanford that's like the
very like the top end of like what healthcare is,
and those hospitals are like basically they might as well
be gold mines. And then you've got the safety net hospitals.

(20:19):
And my fear is that the safety net hospitals they
would like to casualize to uber. They keep telling us about, oh,
they're going to uberize nursing. Well, you know, what is
it that they're doing to stop you know, over half
of the nurses being at Cook County Health Service from
being replaced with agency nurses right now, Like how long

(20:40):
is that going to go? Until there's like you know,
they go from a bargaining unit of you know, over
fifteen hundred nurses in the union or seventeen hundred nurses
in the union to like, you know, it could theoretically
drop down to you know, a handful of Union nurses.
And so they like they it's like an unofficial layoff, right,
people quit and they institute a hiring freeze and then

(21:02):
they don't replace them. They bring them in as agency
nurses because they would rather in these safety net institutions
not pay benefits, not pay pensions. You know, our hospital
we lost, they took our pension away, and the union
didn't do anything to fight that back. I was in
the pension plan for like two years and then they're like,
guess what, no more pensions and the union to do

(21:25):
shit about it, and they could have done something. I mean,
it was like it's because the contract language is like, well,
you get whatever we offer you. And our teamsters at
our facility took like a very like a hundred two
to four hundred dollars buyout to get rid of their pensions,
and that was the end of our pensions for the

(21:46):
entire medical center. And then our union where our staffers
are all bought into the steelworkers pension, right they have
a pension. They're like, well, John, maybe you'd have to
strike six or eight times, which is what they say
whenever they don't want to do anything. And they certainly
aren't telling us about hospitals, like the folks that all

(22:07):
debates who have struck like ten times to get what
it takes. And it's just like, you know, striking. I
think there's this idea that it's scary. I have co
workers who are telling me, John, just tell me when
the next strike is. I can't wait for the next strike.
But we've been through it. We have a lot of
coworkers who haven't. Half of our nurses are new, they've
never been through a strike. But you know, you build

(22:28):
a union through strikes, which is the thing that is
a little counterintuitive, especially if you do it the right
way and you're strategic about it. Raina, You've been real quiet,
like what do you think about all this? That's really
the number one I'm a lady and I don't interject
unless I absolutely have to. So to go back earlier,

(22:50):
what was said about how unique are Slate is well
is unique in itself. For one, of course, I kind
of sit with being a female and minority. But you
also got to think about the men. Now, there is
not a lot of men in nursing in general, and

(23:12):
I think that's what also they need to look at,
because I heard the criticism about that. But let's flip
the script on this. I mean we individually, as Eric
and John did say before that we were not here
to be a counsel of presidents on the every was
actually jumping on it to help other people. But from

(23:35):
you know, I myself and Eric, we've been knowing each
other for what seven six seven years? Yeah, something like that.
And yeah, and you know, I have seen the changes
with the union. I feel that the union has been
really stagnant. I think our dudes should be used for community.

(23:59):
And now during the pandemic, there is a lot of
nurses are totally burnt out and they're slowing to realize
that nursing is not what I thought. I did not
signed for for this pandemic. I never I've been a
nurse for thirteen years. I never knew that was never
thought it was going to be a pandemic like this.
So it changed your whole spectrum of what nursing stands

(24:22):
and also what we should do to preserve it. Now,
I you know, I look young, but I am a
grandma about to be a four and so one of
them are going to be a nurse one day. And
actually one of them is a ten year old. And
he told me, he said, you know, looking at all
my nursing books and looking at you know, all my

(24:44):
medical stuff, and he's looking at me, he said, you
know what, I may want to be a nurse now.
Mind you, two years ago he wanted to be a
race car driver. So it happened. So it kind of
inspired me a little bit, like I need to do
more leadership. I mean, I think I'm a natural leader
in itself. It's just how to do it, where to

(25:05):
go And this is just a step for me. I'm
at that age. You know, I need to look behind
you of all the younger nurses my family and what
my young grandchildren, what they may be. And I want
to preserve that. And that's a third reason why I'm
standing to do this. So and my peers. I mean,

(25:29):
you work, any nurse work eight to twelve hours. The
facility that you work with is almost a second home
to you. So you want to stand up with your peers.
You know, there shouldn't be no divide. We're all standing
for an employer who has been trying to take benefits away,
trying to take you know, anything that makes it decent

(25:53):
for you to just work and also is wearing tearing
on your wellness and your work life balance, and it's
your whole mental state. So it's so important to really
know about your union, about the breakdown of it, about
the history, about everything. You need to keep your employer

(26:14):
accountable and also within the union. Just like nurses have
to be accountable for everything we do, and if we
get in trouble, of course we're going to be reprimanded.
The union needs to also go through the same thing
as we do. It's only fair. So that's pretty much
it for me. Any other questions you're reading, are you

(26:35):
have you finished up your copy of Solidary Unionism yet? Arena? Oh?
You mean the rank and file I am on chapter
three has been on. It's been interesting and since I
will be going on vacation, well, I am on vacation
right now. I'll be leaving tomorrow. I should be finished
up with that book by then. That's one thing that like,

(26:57):
I don't want anyone to think just because I can
speak out the union in a half way intelligible way,
that I've been studying this for a long time. A
lot of my knowledge about the union is pretty new
and recent and uh, like I got, you know, I
picked up a copy of Stoughton Lens the Rank and
File Labor Law for the rank and Filer. There's an

(27:20):
audiobook of it. It's just a great, like short little
book about everything you need to know to kind of
like exercise your rights and try and stay out of
like trouble. I picked up a copy of you know, uh,
Jaye Mccaflery's no Shortcuts. We've been passing around a copy
of Stoughton Lens Solidary Unionism and like there's a lot.

(27:43):
And then we went to Labor Notes, and like it's
funny because our union sent us to Labor Notes. Like
I've got pictures of me and like other shift change
people that were taken by staff if we were at
the Labor Notes conference. The funny thing is that I
was in the talks about how to build a caucus
and how to exercise our democratic rights as one of

(28:06):
the funeral the only nurses in some of those spaces.
And you know, I don't know what they expected to happen,
but the way they're treating this whole thing, every little
thing that we've gotten, the fact that we can send
that we were about to be able to send emails
out was the thing that we had to fight for
every step of the way. They gave us a set

(28:26):
of rules that the rules are the most conservative interpretation
of our legal democratic rights that are set in federal law.
They gave us like the nineteen fifties, like carpenters union
interpretation of like those those rights. They ignored all the
case law that we have to be able to communicate
with our coworkers to normal union channel, like every communication

(28:49):
method our union uses to normally communicate with us legally
we should have access to. Now they're trying to throttle
that's like all you can only send an email communication
every fifteen days. It's like you know what, like you're
doing your little whisper campaign like twenty four hours, twenty
four seven just by and then you have to opt into,
like to communication about the about the election, like they

(29:12):
were trying to keep and they're cutting meetings short, they're
cutting meetings off. They were trying to bury this. Now
we think that they're they're trying to shift gears because
they know that this is a lot more serious than
they thought it was. You know, we're not here to
you know, turn the union upside like well, maybe turn
the union upside down is a good way to think
of it, but in a good productive way, not in

(29:34):
a you know, turn it upside down and shake it,
you know, to like you know, destroy it. We want
to turn it upside down so that it's the way
a real union is supposed to be, is it. People
who are elected into leadership are accountable to the people
who elect them and um, And our goal is to
you know, to make the union like we want to

(29:55):
go from something like you know, Chicago Teachers Union, which
is really power full and famously like democratic. It wasn't
always that way. It was only focused on very basic stuff,
you know, before the women in the Chicago Teachers Union
took it over and changed it for the better. M
you know, that's our goal as we want our union

(30:16):
to be to have that internal, vibrant discussion and debate
about how the union should be, work should work, because
we know that as nurses that we've got the skills
in the capacity to have an impact on that. Others
are said, we don't think that people who are paid
out of our due should ever be afraid when a
nurse opens their mouth and says, I think things could

(30:36):
be better or I don't like how this is happening. Yeah,
And I think I think one more thing I do
you kind of want to add is that you know,
you were talking a bit earlier about sort of the
risk of stagnation, and I mean, I think something that

(30:56):
people don't want to hear, is it, like you know,
there there. It's been a wave of militancy in the
last few years, but the actual union like the actual
unionization rate of the US keeps going down. And I
think a big part of that is, you know, like
even even in the periods when unions are really strong,
they got into these sort of bureaucratic patterns where people

(31:17):
were busy sort of fighting their own internal like like
busy fighting their own rank and file, and then when
the bosses came for them, they got destroyed. And I
don't know, like it really seems like a moment where
either unions are going to people like you are going
to win and you get these rank and file movements
that are changing what the union is to people it's

(31:37):
supposed to be, or the last remnants of unionism is
going to die. And that's I don't know, Like I mean,
it's depressing, but that's like if you if you just
look at the unionization rate chart, it just keeps going
down and down and down, and every time it seems
like it's hit to do low, it's like it finds
another way to go out, which I guess is kind
of a grim way to look at it, but I

(32:00):
don't know. I mean, it is very positive to think
about how how there's organizing that's difficult. It's hard to
get people to do some things right. It's difficult to
pull people together for you know, certain types of organizing
when they don't feel like they have a say or

(32:21):
a stake in what's going on. But I will say
that like it has been, it is always eye opening
when I watch my coworkers pull together in this thing,
and I think that there's that common experience at work
and especially care workers right now it is like, um
that is driving us to do different things. There's a

(32:42):
reason why we're having a rank and file movement in
our union now and things aren't just continue like continuing
to stagnate. I think that people recognize that their union
has to be fighting for them. I think that's a
big thing. People want the union to fight, not to
just kind of like sit there and you know, you know,
people get really frustrated when they feel like they're dues

(33:04):
are being taken and they're not seeing that immediate benefit.
The immediate benefit only comes when we pull together and
we fight back. So I think that I totally see
what you're saying. I think a lot of that comes
down to people who get into these positions. And this
is why we believe in the principle of like rotation
and like and churning over the leadership as much as possible.

(33:30):
Is that I think when you stay and no one
should be in the position of organize yourself out of
a job. Right if you're doing you're if you're being effective,
you're organizing yourself out of a job. And I have
organized out of myself out of some jobs, and right
now I've organized myself out of telling people that there's
a movement and that we've got to participate in it.

(33:52):
And now I'm moving on to other things because I
have like a whole crew of people in my hospital
who are doing that organizing work without me having to
do it. So I think that there's like it's can
be lile depressing when you look at like the raw numbers,
but I think that a lot of that is Like
it's like if you if your union is clearly not

(34:13):
great and people kind of complain about it, then yeah,
no one's going to want to join it. Like if
your union thinks it's more important to be a landlord
or you know, stash forty two million dollars in the bank,
then it is to invest that money in actually building
organizational expertise or you know, building organizing the unorganized, like
Eric was saying, in places that are like right to

(34:35):
work states, which we've won, we have won contracts in
right right to work states, but you have to be looking.
You have to be constantly pushing for it. And if
you can't just take a little win here there and
then be excited because you just got another union to
affiliate you, like our union does, Like we need to
be working on actually bringing more and more workers into

(34:57):
our union and if we don't do that, it will die.
But um, I think that there's a spirit in the
you know that. You know, when you come to a
place to work with co workers and you face common
enemy and common problems, common conditions, you do see what
it can look like when people decide to do something

(35:17):
on their own. You know. To get back to MIA's
point about declining unionism in this country. In order to
you know, to change this decline in unionism, we need

(35:40):
to change who we are as union members. We need
to You know that I'm not a big doctor Phil fan,
but he used to say that thing all the time.
Well how's that working for you? Unions need to take
a look at themselves and say how how how is
this working for you? We were declining? Why do we

(36:02):
continue to do the same thing we're doing over and
over again. We need to change who we are. For example,
as a nurse, a nurse needs to know when they
stand up and speak out that when they stand up
they won't be standing alone, that there'll be somebody around them,
that other nurses are going to be there right behind them,
backing them up. And that goes for any trade. You know,

(36:26):
we can't progress as workers without struggle, and there will
be struggle. We need to march forward. We need to
be able to say everybody that can be any union
should be any union, and we need to expand ourselves

(36:48):
as nurses. I mean, I don't want to harp on it,
but this pandemic was devastating for us. And obviously no
nurses worked remotely. I should say no bedside nurse worked remotely.
I know many of our nurse managers worked remotely and
checked in on us through you know, online things, but

(37:10):
for the most part, every nurse, bedside nurse was at
that bedside. It was not it was not pleasant, it
was it was something that I'm sure many nurses are
probably in uh you know, counseling for they were that
traumatized by it. They had many people had lost family members,

(37:34):
just like the rest of the public did, yet they
still had to continue to work. Um. I think as
a as a union, we need to change who we are.
And like I said, I don't want to point fingers
or anything that you know, people that are in the
union now or the people were running against I'm sure

(37:55):
they're good people, but we have a different idea, and
we want to bring a change to how the union runs.
And I think that change will make us a stronger
and better union, and I think will be will have
happier nurses and wind up with more activist nurses who
will expand the unions. It's going to be a word

(38:17):
of mouth. You know, one thing. You can have the
best organization in the world, but the things that are
the best product, but what really makes your product worthwhile
is word of mouth campaigns. People have to talk about you.
People have to say, hey, you know that California Nurses

(38:38):
Association that, and then you they're really doing something. I
want to be a part of that. Uh, you know,
we need to you know, we've been pressing on a
Medicare for all, single payer and and of course ratios
for everybody, but we need to start organizing more and

(38:59):
all those states where those workers suffer. Because I can
tell you this right now, you know, I'd ever talked
about it with John. Our hospital is filled with nurses
from the South and they tell you, oh, I came
to California for the ratios. They need to fight for
those ratios back in Alabama and Mississippi and all the

(39:22):
states they come from We need to help them, you know,
bring unions to the South. You know, the basic core
of right of right to work, it was racism. The
racism is what drove right to work. It was the
same people that brought you segregation is what brought you
right to work. And you know that's a fact. Oh

(39:46):
and it's important for us that you know, we want
to be an activist union and I'm not opposed to that,
but we can do that by unionizing these hospitals and
making those nurses bedside lives a lot better. Um. You
know Stoughton Lynn. It's funny is that I always laugh,

(40:07):
you know, John brings it up. I'm from originally from Canton, Ohio.
And of course Stoughton Lynn taught I believe it was
at Youngstown State. He was from. He was He spent
the last part of his life after his Vietnam War
activism in Youngstown, in the Youngstown area. And I think
the last book I read by him was Bob Lee's

(40:28):
and Zapatistas. You know, he was talking about the It's
a great book. Um. And not many people know about him.
I knew about him in Ohio because you know, you know,
social justice work there. Uh, you know at Walsh at
that time it was Walsh College and then Walsh University. Now, uh,

(40:50):
you know Joe Turma, the professor there, you know, was
often talk about Stoughton Lynn and that's how I, you know,
started reading a lot of his works. The things that
he says about rank and file workers is something that
we need to make part of the national conversation. And

(41:10):
we need to get that message out. We need to
tone down the big union actions and the big union
talk and let's just make it a nurse's conversation. We
always talked about our union about nurses values. Nurses valuables.
Values are invaluable. They apply to every walk of life,

(41:36):
every trade. And I think that's what we need to do.
And I know that's what Mark would say if he
was on the call with us. I just got a
text from him. He's almost finished with our video, so
he's working hard. I mean, the guy took two weeks
of his own time. And that's another thing. Here we are,
we are bedside nurses. He had to self teach himself

(41:59):
how to make pretty high end quality videos. And we're
not bought and sold. We don't hire anybody to do
our work for us. We're doing this ourselves. We're bootstrapping it,
as you know what they call bootstrapping it yourself up here.
We are bootstrapping a campaign and a movement. I don't

(42:22):
know if we're going to win. We are at least
going to make a hell of an impression on people,
and I hope whether we win or lose, that impression
goes far and that people listen to what we're saying
and demand what we're standing for. What we want our

(42:42):
union to be. We don't want to have an sciu
like union. We don't want to like we're paying for
services here. We want a union that listens to us
and does what we want. A nurse shouldn't have to
beg a labor rep to say no. We said no

(43:06):
to a last, best and final and our labor rep
said no. This in our professional opinion, this is a
good deal. Well guess guess what, Mia, We got ten
percent more by saying no. And I know that that
sounds greedy, but in reality, um, you know, we do
get paid considerably more in California than in other place

(43:30):
in the country. But also, to buy a house in
a bad neighborhood is a million and a half dollars correct.
So it's so it's I have to drive an hour
away just to get to work. It is cheaper where
I live right now than it is in the Bay Area.
I could not get a house in the Bay Area
at all. And we should be incorporating housing demands into

(43:51):
our negotiations as well, like especially years gonna be a landlord,
Like come on, well, okay, how about we you know,
the first public housing was really cooperative housing built by unions.
Like there's no reason why. Um, you know these some
of these institutions are like incredibly wealthy and building. Uh,

(44:12):
you know, if we can we have the kind of
power to bring them to you know, a screeching halt.
We should be able to, like, you know, get the
kind of things that we need to live by in
our community, like we should be living where our patients
are anyway. And it's you know, and it's a way
of bringing our bringing us ourselves into our community so

(44:36):
that our community is you know that we're part of
our community. Um. And you know, I think where I'm
just gonna say, I'm going to be waking up in
six hours so that I can go back to work.
And we want to make sure that people know a
couple of key things. So there is an election happening.

(44:57):
If you are a nurse in a NA California Nurses
Association or National Nurses United and NOC like hospital, there's
an election happening. Ballots are being mailed out to you
on on channel tenth. We expect that they're going to
start arriving a day or two after that. We are

(45:20):
the shift Change slate, so the four of us are
running for the Council of Presidents. It's Eric, Raina, John
and Mark And if you want to find us on
social media, we just got our Instagram account. We are
called Shift Change and on You. We're on TikTok Now
we're going to be releasing some videos shift Change and

(45:42):
on You, and then we're also going to have we've
got our YouTube and Facebook set up as well. Look
for us there. And we've got to go fund maybe
because we've got to buy the materials that we are
using to help organize with. Thankfully, by the sounds of it,
our lawyers are going to be working for us for

(46:04):
because they believe in what we're doing. And these are
movement lawyers. These are not right wing people who want
to fight unions. They want unions to be uh, you know,
accountable to the workers and to be strong fighting unions.
And that's our main goal is we think that our
union could be one of the most powerful unions in
the country if we organize and fight, and we organize

(46:28):
by building our relationships on trust and solidarity, by constantly
working to defend our contract. And we think that as
we build that energy, we can take that to all
the other things that we think are portness nurses. So
we talk about nurses values. We know those are actually
nurses values and not some person who decided that they're
going to tag along with us and ride on our

(46:48):
coattails to you know, whatever political future that they think
they have. You know, we are you know, this is
our union and we're going to make it you know,
accountable to us so that we can change the world
and change our workplace and make you know, being a
nurse one of those kind of jobs that people aspire
to and not something that they come into for two

(47:09):
or three years and then leave because it's so terrible.
So I don't know what else to say. I'm ready
for shift change, rainy. You're ready for shift change, yep.
And just like Nelson Mandela saying I never lose. I
either win or I learned. Hell yes, hell yeah. I

(47:30):
love this. This is the stuff I look for. Thank
you so much, Thank you, Mia, thank you, thank you
all for being on. This is great and I really
hope you'll win and if we win, bring us back. Yeah.
I was about to say, yeah, give us a report back.
We'll tell you, we'll tell you everything that happened, and
maybe if we win, we'll have a nice victory party

(47:52):
and maybe we'll let you come out, you and the
rest of the It could Happen Here crew, Maybe do
some live stuff for us, because I think be a
kick out of that. Every time I hear a nurse
say that I listened to it could happen here a
part of me just like does a little Snoopy happy dance.

(48:13):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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