March 23, 2023 • 56 mins
Raina, Eric, and John from Shift Change, the first slate of rank and file workers ever to run for National Nurses United's Council of Presidents, tell the story of how being isolated, lied to, and forced to take deals seemingly cut by union staff behind their backs led them to make history and fight to change the largest nurses union in the US.
https://shiftchange2022.my.canva.site/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Dick had Happened Here, the show about things
following apart how to put them back together again. I'm
your host, Mia Wong, and today we have a really
exciting episode. We're gonna be talking to a group of
workers from the California Nurses Association, which is specifically their
national Organizing Committee, which is I think better known to
most people. And then you are a National Nurses United
and these people are part of a shift of workers
(00:30):
who was for the first time running a rank and
file slate for the Council of Presidents, which is sort
of They're a body that combines the positions of vice
president president in the union. They're called Shift Change. And so, Eric,
do you want to introduce yourself? All right, my name
is Eric Cook. I've been a nurse for thirty two years.
(00:51):
I currently work in the cardiac telemetry floor. And I
became a nurse after being a Navy corman in the
First Call War and just continued in healthcare from there.
I was originally an alvin and then became a registered nurse.
And I've been on the past three negotiating teams for
(01:12):
Altabates Summit Hospital and I've seen a lot of changes
in the attitude and movement of the union in the
past twelve years. So I'm hoping with John and Raina
and Mark to make a change for our union and
(01:33):
our members for the better. Yeah, I'm glad, glad you
could be here to join us. Thank you. Yeah, Rina,
do you want to introduce yourself? Hi? There, I'm Rina Lindsay.
I have been a California nurse for over thirteen years,
and out of those thirteen years, eight of them I've
been in Altbate's Medical Center, which was my first union
(01:55):
as an r N. How I be an Also, I'm sorry.
And also i work in ice you and I've been
there through been there for about seven years wow. And
I've worked with Eric a year prior to that. So
(02:17):
the reason why I became a nurse, it is a
long story, but the bridge version is at the beginning,
I wanted to be a lawyer. So when I went
to college, kind of fund I was dyslexic, so that
kind of backed out. And then I also was a
teen mom, which that's something that a lot of people
(02:38):
do not know about me. And during that whole process,
I wanted to find something that I could be an
advocate for people and also know the political side of it.
So nursing became the best benefit. One thing I love
about nursing is you can learn everything about the world,
to know about people without going anywhere, So that was
(03:02):
the thrill. And then also being an advocate for the
patients I take care for. In addition to that, you know,
knowing my peers and knowing that we all have the
similar struggles when it comes to the systems that we
work for. Doesn't matter which employer you work for, and
(03:22):
so being in the union it gives you that way
of a contract between you and your employer. And along
the way there has been some issues which Eric and
I and John all been experiencing where things do need
to change, and being part of shift change is part
(03:46):
where we have to change of leadership and be more
transparent between the union, the employer, and the people in general.
Hell yeah, and yeah, John, do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah? Sure,
I'm John Horronymous. I'm a packy recovery nurse at University
(04:07):
of Chicago. Before that, I was in the medical u
for six and a half years, and then before that
I was like a associate's degree our end working at
the emergency room at holy Cross Hospital. And I also started,
which is funny to me, as an LPN, which is
(04:28):
the same thing as an LVN that Eric did. And
I was a CNA before that. I decided to become
a nurse way back in the day when I was
trying to figure out what I wanted to do after
dropping out of high school, and I was thinking about
man and maybe it should become like a history teacher,
and I was like, oh, why would I want to
go back to this place I hate so much. I
(04:49):
dropped out of it, and I personally got like incredibly
sick with something called uld sort of kalitis, and I
got a bunch of surgeries done and got some really
amazing experience being taken care of by nurses, and it
became really immediately obvious to me, like I also, like Raina,
(05:09):
wanted to help people. And also I thought that nursing
was like a way where even like for you know, individuals,
I could change someone's day just a little bit for
the better, but also like maybe changed some bigger things.
And so I thought nursing was just like a really
great way to do that. Also, it's really fortunate to
(05:30):
be raised by an amazing nurse. My mom was a
nurse and she was always like she's like one of
those people was my hero. And a lot of other
nurses in my family, both men and women, including someone
who is like a Kentucky Frontier nurses, like the first
(05:50):
group of nurse practitioner, nurse midwife back in the like
the nineteen forties, back in Kentucky. So I've got a
lot of nurses in my family and on this like
incredibly proud to be like paring on all the stuff
that they have been doing for all their years as
like nurses. So and like meeting the folks out in California,
(06:14):
like Raina and Eric. It just makes me feel so good,
like we're doing really important stuff in terms of both
our daily practice of being a nurse, but also like
that we can have like this bigger impact on how
things are happening in our profession, in the healthcare industry
and just the broader world. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've talked
(06:37):
like a decent amount on this show now about sort
of the labor issues that have been facing nurses both
actually here and in the UK, and I think a
little bit in a couple of other countries. Yeah, I
was I was wondering what were the sort of specific
things that you all were dealing with, both just in
the profession and then also in the union that got
(06:57):
you all together to run this slate. Okay, So one
of the things that caused us to actually meet by
coincidence was one of my co workers, Torol Doordall, who's
a Norwegian nurse who's been a nurse here in America
for over thirty years. She contacted Labor Notes and, you know,
(07:24):
realizing something was wrong in our union, she started talking
with specifically Sarah Hughes at labor Notes, and through labor
Notes and Sarah, we were able to connect with John
and Chicago, and it was amazing that what we discovered
is that our problems here in California were mimicking what
(07:50):
they've experienced in Chicago, and through Sarah finding out from
other diverse communities of nurses and tech Florida, North Carolina,
New York, in Minnesota that there same things are happening
there under our same union. And our complaint was through
(08:11):
our union was that we felt we were being siloed.
And of course, when I say siloed, is actually in
our negotiations. We had seventeen facilities negotiating, but we were
told that we were not allowed to communicate with each other.
I said it was it was forbidden by the federal mediator.
(08:34):
Now why this is? Yes, yes, I know that was
my reaction initially too. There were two other negotiators on
the team. It was highly suspicious because the union wanted
to put all new nurses onto the negotiating team, and
that was a little bit of a red flag. There
(08:55):
were so many red flags through this negotiations. I swear
I could almost see Lennon's tomb, that's how many red
flags there were. It was amazing to us is that
they said the mediator forbade us from talking to each other,
because that was part of the agreement to have the
federal mediator. The three of us that had previous experience
(09:21):
with negotiating just knew that was the wrong thing. And
it took over at least about seven months before we
started breaking through to other tables and communicating with them
on text and having our own zoom conversations with them
(09:41):
to convince them that no, this is a lie. We
are allowed to talk to each other. And we end
up finding out that we were kind of being railroaded
into what we considered an agreement that was less than
satisfactory for the workers, for the nurses who have suffered
during the pandemic. We could have gotten probably one of
(10:06):
the greatest contracts that any nursing body had ever received.
We had the industry by the throat. We suffered so much,
you know, John, everybody throughout the country, all the nurse
has suffered. Everybody's suffered, but everybody that was at that
bedside during the pandemic, we it was a horrific experience.
(10:32):
It's great when you take care of people and you
heal them, Yes, it's that's a great thing. But the
stress and the you know, the unending anxiety that you felt,
and then in the midst of this you have a
union that short changes you at a point when we
had so much power, and thank Heavens for Sarah to
(10:57):
put us into contact with all these other nurses to
realize that it wasn't just the subter division of the
California Nurses Association that was running things amok. It was
actually it seemed to be a perceived playbook plan of
what they were doing throughout the country. And I think
(11:20):
nobody perceives themselves as doing evil or anything like that.
I think they always think that they're doing it for
the better interest of everybody. But that's what's important about
a rank and file movement is that every nurse, every
person in the union is important and deserves a voice.
(11:43):
And we don't need to be gas lit. We don't
need to be mistreated by the union that we pay
to represent us. We need to be marching on the boss.
We could have had an unending euphoria for nurses with
(12:07):
a contract. We could have had great staffing, we could
have had better pay, we could have had everything that
we wanted to make our work lives to be the
best they could be. And it seemed our union already
had a preplanned agreement with the corporation. Now they deny that,
(12:28):
but it's kind of hard to believe when they had
the same agreement that they were supposedly negotiating in silos
that they weren't communicate. Each table was supposedly negotiating their own,
but it was the same thing they wanted at every table,
and not all the tables were equal. It was very
(12:48):
sad for us. Like I said, this is the third
negotiating team. I was on the first negotiating team I
was on. We lasted over two years negotiating and we
went through nine strikes and threatened at tenth and until
we got an agreement. So our hospital, obviously it's Altibates
(13:09):
Hospital in Berkeley. Our sister hospital, Summit Hospital in Oakland,
and we have affiliated with us, is the Herrot Campus,
which is the the psychiatric facility. And we have struggled
so much through this pandemic and it was amazing to
(13:31):
us that we came up with less than what we
should have gotten. I will tell you that thanks to
Sarah and meeting all these other nurses, we were able
to come back. And I think through fear and intimidation,
our union was forced to back us and we're able
(13:51):
to get economically what we wanted. But like the rest
of the country, as nurses, we wanted better staffing. We
needed more more bodies at the bedside. We're overworked, we're fatigued.
Raina worked in the ICU and they had their own
COVID unit there. Um. I don't think there was enough
(14:15):
tums and roll aids to go around for all of
those nurses. The anxiety and um, you know, the heart
in your throat and of course John himself, I don't
want to his personal business, but you know his experience.
He has long COVID. So we we as nurses, have
suffered quite a bit, and we expected a lot more
(14:38):
from our union. Yeah, and I mean even just on
a very basic level, like no matter what you go through,
you have the right for your union not to light you.
Let's see, this is a very elementary sort of that's
a that's a really elementary thing. Yeah, but like it's
really u it's really scary how comfortable some of the
(15:05):
people who are paid their wages out of our dues
are with lying to us. I think that's a thing
that like, um, you know, like we're one of the
things we're specifically fighting for is like transparency and accountability,
especially for our staff. And you know, when I, you know,
(15:27):
Eric mentioned that I had had long COVID, I'm finally
getting I've been to the point where I'm like as
recovered as I probably ever will be, and which is great.
You know, being recovered from long COVID is so much
better than having long COVID. But you know, I was
always like someone that they came to to ask for
help with like political sorts of issues inside the union,
(15:49):
or they would come to me for Medicare for all
or um you know, speaking around things like ratios that
sort of stuff, or they would send me off to
When the Chicago teachers went on strike in twenty nineteen,
I was sent to speak on behalf of our union
for them, and you know, just doing the work of
I'm kind of a I'm a bit of an agitator.
(16:12):
And then COVID hit and it was just a really
surreal experience. And my area the hospital is one of
those places where they basically did everything they could to
minimize the amount of surgeries we were doing initially when
the lockdowns were happening for the first six months of
(16:33):
the pandemic, and then but they were moving us into
because we are all former ICU nurses, so I would
do my shift a few shifts up in the medical
ICEU than we made a special clean ICEU because we're
still getting traumas. A University of Chicago apparently sees more
penetrating gunshot and stab wounds than any other hospital in
(16:56):
the United States. Thirty percent of our traumas are are
from some sort of violence, which is substantially higher than
anywhere else in the US and then I got sick, right,
and so to me, the union was like a thing.
It was like, man, this is nice to have. I
had never worked at an union hospital before. Getting union
(17:19):
raises was like a big step up in my life,
you know. And it was also like, oh yeah, our
union's progressive, Like I kind of I like most of
the things that it stands for, and I didn't really
think of it as someone that needed the union right
to do the things that unions really kind of like
(17:39):
is the bread and butter of unions, which is like
coming in and like helping you when you need help
as an individual worker, and you know, when you're not
in the middle of like a contract negotiation. And I
got sick with long COVID and lost. We had negotiated
this great you know, like COVID six pay polow see,
(18:00):
and management just took that away without like from me,
without really giving any notice or you know, explaination why.
And you sit there trying to get like the help
that you need from your Union's like I'm trying to
explain why it is that, like this is a problem
for me to our labor rep who's like our they
(18:21):
called them business agents. Labor reps whatever. There are people
who basically are paid out of our dues to kind
of help us in theory like stay organized and be
pushing management to do, you know, to follow the contract.
And it got to the point where like my partner
(18:41):
who's like is like literally screaming at the labor repel.
I'm on the phone with the labor rep and she's
you know, it's just like what the fuck is your
union even doing? Like why are they not making sure
that you are taking care of And it was like
this really like come to Jesus moment where you're like, oh, yeah,
like this union ship isn't just like you know, flat
tudes about like we need a ratio bill in Illinois
(19:03):
or you know, Medicare for all or Bernie Sanders. It's like, oh,
this shit is actually like about my material well being
and like my family still hasn't recovered from all that
because they only you know, after an enormous amount of
pressure was put on staff, they finally started looking into
it and we got you know, payouts for not just me,
(19:25):
but for ten other nurses who had had their COVID
pay like cut, you like really unjust ways and really
opened my eyes as to like what a union should
be doing. Um, and it really opened my eyes that
maybe there's a problem with how staff interact with us
as workers, because like there should be you know, we
(19:49):
try and like say, like you know, there's a service
union service business or service unionism, and then there's rank
and value unionism and we have this weird situation sharing
union where they tell us where a rank and file
democratic union, except the staff kind of treat us like,
you know, it's a business union. So we get told
one thing, but then we see another thing and like
(20:13):
not that I think that like, uh, it's you know,
the whole point of a union, you kind of pull
together to take care of people who can't necessarily take
care of themselves. In that moment, and like it just
took an enormous amount of effort on my family's part
to like get that moving, and it just seemed incredibly
it was as very eye opening for me as a
(20:34):
you know, my experience here in Chicago. No, that that's
really bleak. I mean that that's another thing that you
would you know, you would expect a union like to
just be on top of not not even just a
sort of oh well, you asked them and they started
doing it like you you would think that, hey, the
people who got COVID doing this job not getting paid
(20:57):
what they're supposed to be getting paid would be like
priority and not something you have to fight them over.
That is is incredibly crim I don't know, well, I
(21:18):
haven't a story for you. So my first year working
at out to Bates. Before that, I was working in
Swallow hospitals and they gave you certain packages about your benefits.
So when it was time for me to give my benefits,
I couldn't give my benefits at all because during that
time they were doing it at the yearly. So I said,
(21:38):
is there any way possible at least to get something,
because mind you, they are and for my benefits, I'm
not paying for it anything for it that there should
be a reason because if I had any medical issues,
what would happen? And basically the union was very lackluster
about it. Now, of course I went to the manager,
(21:58):
went to human resource. Basically they basically told me, where
there's eighteen hundred nurses, and you know what we're going
to do about this issue, and pretty much it was.
It has pretty much disappeared about it. There was nothing
I could do so for that whole year. So I
worked in January of two fifteen, I had to wait
(22:22):
till the following year to get benefits. To get medical benefits,
jes Now, I got everything else, so be honest, I
got everything else, But the medical benefits is important. But
thank god I don't have any health issues. Thank god
my daughters didn't have any health issues where we didn't
require any help and there wasn't in an emergency. But
(22:44):
when I started noticing there were other nurses or teas
that were spirits of the same thing. Because a lot
of us got hired within that time frame, they weren't
telling us these issues, and we would end up getting
these things sooner. And it's all about transparency, it's all
about our value. And then over the years, people always complain,
(23:07):
I'm paying these dues, why are they not helping? Why
are not supportive? And when I was actually hired, they
were quick to give you the paperwork to tell you
how to pay this. Also they could take money off
your dues quicker than what about the history about the union?
Why is the history is? Why is the union important?
(23:28):
And what you can do if there's a grievemance? There
was none of that, and to this day it's still
the same thing because I precept new grads and I
tell them about, you know, part of the union. What
he got. Oh I didn't get a booklet or oh
I didn't hear anything about it, but I got this
paper here so they could take out my dues. That's
(23:50):
what pisses me off of anything. Is that part so so?
And then all this stuff dealing with what Eric has
told you, what we've been doing with the strikes and
the negotiations meet. Personally, we should have done negotiated within
the first year the pandemic, and I think we got everything,
(24:11):
but they were quick to say, no, we're going to
get all these facilities all together at one and so
we can all negotiate. And then the gag order happened,
the slam of the gag order, and I'm like, there
is a lot of collusion going on and that shit
needs to stop. So I mean things that they don't
really tell us, which I think is really a thing
(24:33):
that we want to resolve, is they don't really inform
you of what your union rights are. You kind of
get the initial like here's your wine garden rights, which
means that you have a right to representation whenever you're
being disciplined. But aside from that, there's very little discussion
inside of our union facilities, in particular about the kinds
(24:53):
of things that we have as like union members, what
our rights are, what are our rights within the union,
how the union works. So many of my co workers
don't like a big part of our work is just
explaining that there's an election happening. And so you would
hear that an election had happened maybe and you know,
(25:16):
you would be like, well, who voted? I don't know,
like and you'd get these like, you know, all of
the communication from about the election to us as the
people who are like the you know, the opposition has
all been in these very like plane plane envelopes that
don't look like anything like it could be like just
(25:36):
an anonymous bill you wouldn't know or junk mail, and
so like, you know, as a union member, you have
something called a right to represent representation. So and every union,
every union employee and elected officer is considered a fiduciary,
(25:57):
has a fiduciary obligation to look out for your financial
interest us and if they don't do that, it's called
a failure to represent our union in particular, Spends had
brags internally about never having a They called them unfair
labor practice. Like if a nurse or any worker in
any union decides that their union, you know, did not
(26:19):
represent them their financial interests, they can file something called
an unfair labor practice claim for failure to represent. Our
union is like they've never had an unfair labor practice claim.
Stick We've foy had one of their unfair labor practice claims,
and somehow it got like withdrawn like in this really
like sketchy way, and it was like just a random
(26:42):
one that we picked to to see what happened, and
so then it got like assigned like a special like
liaison like afterwards, like they're like, oh, we weren't supposed
to do that, like when we contacted the Department of Labor,
We're going to look at that again and figure out
what's going on with it. And it also turns out
when we started doing research, which I think every union
(27:05):
member listening to this should know, every union has to
file paperwork they're legal. There's legally mandated reporting. So there's
things called LM two's and nine nineties that you can
get from the Office of labor management. You google them
and they'll figure you can search for your own union
and you get to see the union finances. And we
(27:26):
found out that there's like forty two million dollars that
our unions chief in the bank account. And this goes
to there is an article it was in Jacobin I'm
not sure about like the financialization of unions, and we're
like forty two million dollars. What is that? It's like
and they, you know, unions will brags like, oh, we've
got a forty two million dollars war chest, but like,
what are we spending that forty two million dollars on?
(27:49):
Is it to like fight arbitrations and constantly be making
like our like working conditions better and taking fights to
the bosses? And is like no, Actually, what they're doing
is they're spending that money on settling unfairly for practice
claims so they don't actually officially stick. And even against uh,
you know, isn't to go to war against our you
(28:09):
know supposed you know, I mean to go to war
against management. It's to go to war against kind of us.
And you think about it, it's just it's just so
wild when you start digging into this stuff it's just crazy. Um, Eric,
you want to tell them about the office at Oakland. Yeah,
so obviously we're in the heart of the empire. Um.
(28:32):
You know, I live of just a few miles from
the CIENA headquarters and I've been there many times prior
to the pandemic. Um, you know, and I have taken
part in lobbying in Washington, DC on behalf of the union.
You know, nurses from all across the country that are
in the Union go to DC and we lobby for uh,
(28:56):
you know, not only for single payer UH and Medicare
for all, but you know, individual bills that will benefit
nurses across the country, whether they're in the union or not.
And you know, I'm very familiar with it. I've lobbied
in Sacramento, and I've bent to the NNU convention in Minnesota.
(29:16):
So I've met a lot of nurses across our union.
In fact, it's one of the when you do that,
that's about the only time you get to reach out
and see other union members. One of the things I
will tell you that John and I and the person
that's not on the call right now is Mark Goodick.
(29:37):
He is an American citizen now, but he was a
Canadian nurse before, and he is right now working on
our campaign video to introduce us to a broader audience.
And that's why he's not on the call tonight. We
should be intermingling and talking with other nurses across the country.
(30:03):
I should not be siloed here in Oakland and not
knowing that what a nurse is doing in Texas. And yeah,
we need to be part of our pledges that we
need to join hands across this country. Every nurse needs
(30:23):
to see. We need to digitalize our contract. We need
to see University of Chicago's contract digitalized. We need to
be sharing our contracts so we know what good things
that maybe they got in Texas, or what good things
they got at the University of Chicago, or what good
things we have in our contract. We need to see
(30:44):
that nurses can say, hey, I want that language. We
need to be sharing that. I don't know why it's
not happening or why it's just at the upper tiers
of union management that they see these things, but we
need to be joined together. No more siloing nurses. You
know altivates the nurses stay in your lane, Kaiser nurses
(31:08):
stay in your lane. University of Chicago stay in. You're like, no, no, no, no,
we need to be one fighting body for the betterment
of nurses. Uh doubt. You know, it's amazing when you
find out that we have a beautiful building that the
(31:28):
Union purchased in downtown Oakland. Um. You know, they only
occupy a few floors of it and they rent out
the rest, and you know what, it is a fabulous
building and it would be great for it to be
a headquarters where we're we're not just fighting and lobbying
for Democratic politicians, but we're actually fighting for nurses at
(31:55):
the bedside. And that's what you know, our whole mission
is that we're going to be running for is for
the council presidents. We need to take the macro focus
down to what is happening at the bedside for every
nurse across the country and make the change for the
better for them. And that's the big difference here. I'm
(32:19):
all for an activist union and I think and we
have been, the Union is active, and you know climate
change and you know how the environment affects the community.
These things are important, but it's more important that we
take care of the nurses at the bedside and offer
opportunities for those nurses who want to be involved to
(32:42):
make the community better. We need to have those resources
available for them. And if we make nurses lives at
the bedside better, we're going to have more nurses available
to make the community better. And that's what we need
to be working on. It is a it is going
to be a fight. I can't be more more honest
(33:06):
than to tell you we are David versus Goliath. We
are four nurses who really have no big national exposure,
but the most important thing we have is that we're
bedside nurses and we know what's important for bedside nurses.
(33:28):
I do want to say, like, there's four of us
who are running for the for the council presidents, but
we would not be even talking to you if we
didn't have like at least one hundred nurses all over
like the hospitals that we're based in, like doing the
work of building our campaign. So I do want to
(33:49):
point out that, like, because like our slate is like
free white guys and it's RAINA, and RAINA is like
and we want to make sure that we're not that
it's we made. The choice that we made was not
you know, us coming together as four individuals being like,
we should fix the union by ourselves. It was this
(34:13):
we keep mentioning labor notes, there's a healthcare worker chat
with a fair number of nurses in our union. And
we noticed that there was an election coming up. And
this is also at the time when both altbates was
having their issues. And then in Cook County we had
a particularly traumatic firing of a very popular staffer who
(34:34):
without any without any input from the local nurses or
elected local nurse leadership. And we got together and we
all were like, what are we going to do? This
is crazy? And we had people like we are like, well,
who would do? Like we have this opportunity and if
we run as a slate, we can do things like
(34:56):
get access to we can send emails out to other
nurses and break down those silos connect nurses from across
the country. And we're like, well, if we don't do anything,
we're kind of stuck in this kind of like square one.
You know, a few small hospitals talking to each other,
not small, but you know a few hospitals talking to
(35:17):
each other, still struggling against like these kind of silos
that have been constructed for us by staff and we
had a vote and there was you know, over twenty
nurses all together raise their hands and where like, we
could do this with an imperfect group of people that
we recognize asn't like the fully representative of everyone in
the union, but are fully committed to democratizing the union,
(35:42):
or we could sit and wait. And a nurse who
had been in the union for a very long time
and she's now retired, said, if you all don't take
this chance, you don't know what could happen in you know,
three years from now union could be completely different. And
so two thirds of everyone in that call said it's
time to go, and we don't care. We would rather
(36:04):
that you run and take that swing and maybe get
big for all of us. So a big part of
what we're doing is like I've got a meeting with
you know, cook counting nurses on Thursday, and they're all
basically going to come to me and tell me all
the shit that I need to do for them, not
the other way around. When you're the rank and file leadership,
(36:31):
you know, it's like taking that pyramid and you invert it, right.
The people who are matter the most are the regular
bedside nurses and all we can do as like people
who step up into that role is we take that.
We take that heat and put ourselves out there so
that we can enact what our co workers are asking
(36:52):
us for. I literally have co workers walking up to
me completely unsolicited. I'm a very like I'm not walking
around telling I like I told a few people up
front in the beginning, because I was like, all right,
you're about to see my face on some flyers, let
me tell you why. Um. But I now have coworkers
coming to me and they're like, John, you've got to
tell me what's going on because I heard a little
(37:13):
bit about it and I need to help you. I'm
just like, okay, it's very it's like it's a little
bit like a drug. But I have to be careful because,
like I like, I can't let this whole thing like
none of this. We all have to stay humble as
we're doing this. Because all four of us, John, all
four of us were volunteering to help other people to
(37:34):
run exactly. We were like, okay, we're here, you know,
John Mark raining on myself. We're here to help you.
Guys who's running now, I'm going to help you. We're
gonna help you and and then it's like the crickets,
you know, and it's like and it goes to show
(37:55):
exactly what happened. It goes to show how impoverished. The
internal to mycy of our union is that people who
are leaders already did not feel comfortable or prepared to
take on that kind of leadership role. You know, these
are nurses who have been in our union for decades,
who are taking fights to their bosses all the time already,
(38:18):
and they did not feel that they knew enough about
the union because there's an intentional I believe, like obscuring
of how the union works. And that's like how you
end up with a situation where people are like, well,
I guess we're just kicking the door down for all
these people who we know will be doing it better
when when we get it situated so that they can
(38:40):
do it better. It's amazing, though, to tell us that
an America and History class, or you have Civics class,
you learn about the US government, right, you know how
it functions, how it runs. But when it comes to
(39:03):
our union, we were all asking each other, you know,
we're putting pieces together. Oh wait, I know the council presidents. Yeah, well,
how does this person fit into it? How does the
board fit into this? Well, how does the election run?
How is it done? We had no We had to
search out the answers. We had to call all sorts
(39:25):
of people, and we were only getting bits and pieces.
There should be a clear outline of how you run
a democracy and a union. I mean, it shouldn't even
be that difficult. You know, obviously there'd be specific rules
for the union, but they shouldn't be occluded. They should
be you know, there shouldn't be occulted from the members.
(39:49):
We should clearly know how you step forward to be
a more of a contributing member to the union, to
run and to serve the others in the union. And
that was an amazing thing that we're finding out amongst
each other. It's like, wow, how does our union run?
(40:10):
I mean how? Why is it difficult to find out
these things? And I mean I don't think it's insurmountable
for us. I don't think that should disqualify us. I
don't think if we can step in and do healthcare
in a pandemic, we can very easily learn how to
how the union functions, and a quick, a quick little tutorial.
(40:34):
I don't think that's going to be a big deal
for us, but yeah, it's pretty amazing. If we're talking
about democracy in the Union. How is it that it
takes I mean, to find the buy laws. We can
all tell you it took a tremendous amount of effort
to find the by laws that are used runs by.
Hold On, hold on, let me tell sorry about the bylaws.
(40:56):
So we have a nurse in Chicago who decided to
make a pain of themselves about how to get the
by laws, and then instead they went to the union
be like, I want to see the by laws. I
want to see the by laws, and they were less
like you know like, and they give them the runaround.
And essentially they gave him he got a personally delivered
(41:18):
envelope that was like a photocopy of a photocopy of
the photocopy of the by laws. And it's funny because
the legally the by laws are all spopos to be
filed with the federal government. And like, from our pressure
and organizing to figure out how our union worked, they
had to publish the newest set of by laws and
on the federal reporting websites. I was in Oakland in
(41:41):
twenty nineteen for the Global Nurse Assembly, and there was
an after party and it was a bunch of staffers
and like, you know, some nurses and you know, just
chit chatting, and I was like, man, be really good.
I told the story about you know, like the you know,
the nurse you tried to get by finally got a
copy of the by laws to you know, some of
these one of these staffers, like, man, it'd be really
great if we, you know, could figure out how are
(42:04):
you know, getting hints for other union works, and just
as like, good luck with that, and they just disappeared.
Ways I'm not yeah, I mean because because what we're
finding is that at any staff that helped nurses learn
how the union works find themselves out of a job.
(42:25):
Like that's what's really that's what really sketches everyone out
is when like people, I mean, you all can tell
tell the story about the staffer who like got random foul.
So I will tell you that there are a lot
of great labor refers, a lot of really great people
(42:48):
out there, But to tell you that they would communicate
with us, because obviously I told you I've done all
these other actions, so I know a lot of people,
and they have my personal number just because we would
you know, when we're in other cities, you know, you
text each other and hey, we're at this place, now
where do we meet you? Etc. So we were getting
(43:11):
texts from some labor reps in the union saying, you know,
you guys need to stand tall. There are a lot
of us supporting you. We can't come out and publicly
support you because we'll get fired. What So. Yeah, so
we were getting these texts from the labor reps saying
(43:31):
what they're doing to you is wrong, and they were
you know, we actually got together and we we wanted
to go out on strike in October, and we were
getting this runaround from a group of this I thought
they were it was just an inner cabal. Little did
I know that it probably extends throughout the you know,
(43:53):
the organization, but that they were telling us that there
was no need for a strike, and it seemed they
were trying to just pressure us into taking a pretty
lowball contract. And so we're getting push you know, the
good labor reps are texting us like stick it, stick
(44:15):
to it, stick to it. And we actually got a
postcard campaign and we actually drove up to the executive
director's house in Sacramento, knocked on our door and delivered
five hundred some postcards that we organized on our own,
not not with you know, it wasn't a union driven,
it was just nurses union, nurses driven, and we delivered
(44:39):
postcards saying we want to go out on stripe, and
the union, of course still fought us on it, but
we were allowed to go out on stripe. And there's
a video of us confronting the executive director at our
strike line, asking her why we were gagged, why the
mediator gagged us, and she clearly didn't know what was
(44:59):
going She said, the mediator wouldn't dag you, Why would
they gag you? So she didn't even know what was
going on at our table. We then got we were
contacted and they we were told, oh my god, they're
running around like chickens with their heads cut off because
they're petrified that they might use their jobs, that they've
(45:22):
been exposed to what they've been doing to you. And
so one of the labor reps that used to work
for us, she used to be at our hospital, and
then she moved along and she was at Suttersilano and
her nurses were asking Hey, did you see this video
(45:42):
of this speech Eric made on this you know, at
the strike line. And it was a speech where I
kind of excoriated the union about why they would gag us,
that that wasn't you know, we needed to be united
and we didn't need a union, you know, working behind
our back. They needed to stand with us. And so
(46:07):
she says, well, let's see. So she was looking at
the video on her Union cell phone and with the negotiators,
nurse negotiators at her hospitals at Arsalana, who were also
in negotiations with us that we weren't supposed to talk
to because you know, the mediator forbade us. So she's
(46:27):
showing the video and they thought because she was formerly
at our hospital, that she was our inside scoop for
all this information, I can swear to God and take
a lie detector test. I had one exchange with her
during like the twenty one months that we were negotiating,
(46:50):
and it was at a joint Bargaining Council meeting on
zoom where they kept the union kept muting us on
zoom and prevent and preventing us from writing in the
chat because we were saying we want to go out
on strike. We want to go out on strike. And
next thing you know, we would find out we couldn't
type in the in the chat. So I texted her
(47:11):
and says, can you see this, I'm trying to write
in the chat and I'm forbidden from writing in the chat.
They muted me, they I can't type in and she goes,
I'm feel for you, buddy, I feel for you. That
was my only exchange with her that caused her and
the fact that her nurses asked her to look at
this video with them, that's what cost her her job.
(47:35):
She's it was. It was clearly guilt by association and
the charges were outrageous for her. We had labor reps
leave because they just felt that it was they couldn't
live with themselves with what they were doing to the nurses.
It was incredible for them that they're here to work
(47:58):
for the nurses, there to work for the most progressive
union in the country, and it was a fraud. That's
been like a big, like consistent problem is that we
know that they're busting their own like the staff are
supposed to have a union, The staff have their own contract,
and that's a normal thing inside unions, right, yeah, you know,
(48:20):
to keep you know, we believe in or that every
worker who you know works for wages should be in
a union. And we have seen time and again that
like the like the contracts, that they've busted their own unions,
so like that they've there was a slate that was
run of nurses in our not nurses of the staffers.
(48:45):
I think it was in twenty twenty one where they
were like trying to get something together to change you know,
things inside you know, how they relate to their management.
And and several of those uh staff are we're basically
illegally fired. So this is like I mean, and I
(49:05):
know you keep saying Jesus a lot, but like there's
a reason, you know me, I wouldn't be running into
this sort of situation if it wasn't like so like
out of this world. The stories that we hear, and
they're the same. This is what's disturbing, is it? And
it's because the union is baited. Like I was just
(49:25):
talking to a lawyer today. She was looking over the
by laws of our union and she's like, this is
set up like a local like it's one big local union.
It's got like a tiny little committee of people who
are making the decisions of affect or we believe that
it's mostly the director non nurse director staff that make
(49:47):
the decisions, but these four people kind of rubber stamp
them and that they make decisions for one hundred and
fifty you know, thousands some on nurses and it's so centralized.
You know, this is one of the things is describe
as like it's almost irresponsible because you know, we live
(50:07):
in you know, you know, crazy times, and all it
takes is one wrong election or bad decision and Supreme
Court and it would literally our union could be dissolved
with like you know, if they just arrested you know
a handful of people and uh and froze our bank accounts.
And a big part of our goal is to help
(50:31):
disperse those resources out into foster more local leaderships so
that any event that you know, something you know, like
that terrible happens like that, we're not caught without anything.
Because the way it situated now is we have this
massive concentration of of all of the decision making and
(50:52):
resources in a very small group of hands, and most
of these people are are not have never been nurses,
or if they've been nurses. They've been out of practice
for so long that they wouldn't know how. I mean,
maybe they can put band aids on. I don't need to, like,
I don't want to disparage anybody. You know, a nurse
(51:12):
is a nurse. I know nurses. You know, you learn
it and you learn a lot of things. It's really important,
great skill, but there's something to be in practice. If I,
you know, I can walk back into the medical issue
I used to work in, you know now it's going
on like five years and be the same nurse that
I was when I was at the peak of my
practice there. And there's a real key thing too. I
(51:34):
think we're all committed. None of us are doing this
because we want to be the face of California Nurses
Association National Nurses United for the next twenty like thirty years.
We're doing this because we feel that there's a real
value to there being a continual turnover in leadership, new ideas,
(51:55):
people bringing in new energy. We think that nurses should
have the opportunity to work release time so that they
could see how the union works as staffers from the
inside and then go back to the regular jobs. We're
doing everything we can to like I like my job.
I think my job is great. I don't want to
leave my job. But doing what we can to bring
(52:18):
our mentality as those bedside nurses to the sensibility of
running the union, because nursing does give you a lot
of really powerful tools, as like you have to be
able to listen to people. We're not listening a lot tonight,
but you know, we've got to talk and get the
word out. Being able to kind of see. A big
(52:40):
thing we see is like, you know, you have a
lot of people who will tell you things and then
they act in a different way. And that's a big
part of nursing practices, being able to understand what people's
real deal is, and you know, it's kind of that's
one of the things where it's real frustrating, is like
we know when people are lying to us, Like I know,
(53:03):
we all know when like the staff are lying to us.
Nurses do have bullshit detectors, that's for sure. You know.
I slept through the class in nursing school where they
teach you how to grow eyes in the back of
your head. The class I slept through where they teach
you to get a through arm. And I really regret
sleeping through the class where they teach you how nurse
(53:24):
mitosis like being able to asexually reproduce an extra nurse.
But I definitely didn't sleep through the class where I
can learn where I can see when someone is saying
one thing and then but it's like what they're fucking
lying to me? Yeah, And that's a that's like a
constant theme. And that's one of the things that's driving
a lot of our organizing is that a lot of
(53:44):
people are tired of just being lied to by people
who were paying their paychecks. And it's like and it's
like they think that we I mean, we have staff informants, right,
we know people inside staff who are allied with us.
We know how they talk about us when we're not there.
They talk about us like we can't figure this shit out,
(54:05):
And it's like, motherfucker. I know how to keep a
person alive who like who shouldn't be alive, Like I
know how to walk a family through like you know,
multiple family members with conflicting opinions through like an end
of life discussion, and along with a doctor who can't
really make up his mind, like you don't think it
while I've got you know, like multiple pressors and like
(54:27):
continuous dialysis. You don't think I can't figure out, Like
when you are like telling us one thing and then
another thing's happening. We know why they're canceling meetings right now.
They don't want us talking to each other where we
get that and this is kind of like it's it's
almost like a feminist practice, like of women talking to
each other makes men nervous, right, And it's like nurses
(54:52):
talking to each other makes management nervous, and it sure
as hell is making our union nervous. We want our
union to be encouraging nurses talking to each other and
not like discouraging it. And anytime someone is discouraging people
from talking to each other who have similar concerns, that
is an immediate you know, like Eric was saying the
(55:12):
red flags. It's like this is the kind of thing
that like this, it's like an almost an abusive relationship.
You know, I would not be running if it wasn't
this intense of a problem this has been. It could
happen here. Join us tomorrow for two of the interview,
where Shift Change discusses more of their vision for what
the union could be in the meantime, you can find
(55:33):
us on Twitter or Instagram That Happen Here pod, and
you can find cool Zone Media the same place as
at cool Zone Media. We've also posted a link in
the description to Shift Changes go fund me if you
want to help support their campaign. It could Happen Here
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
(55:56):
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen podcasts. You can find sources for
It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolson Meta dot
com slash sources. Thanks for listening
Welcome to Dick had Happened Here, the show about things
following apart how to put them back together again. I'm
your host, Mia Wong, and today we have a really
exciting episode. We're gonna be talking to a group of
workers from the California Nurses Association, which is specifically their
national Organizing Committee, which is I think better known to
most people. And then you are a National Nurses United
and these people are part of a shift of workers
(00:30):
who was for the first time running a rank and
file slate for the Council of Presidents, which is sort
of They're a body that combines the positions of vice
president president in the union. They're called Shift Change. And so, Eric,
do you want to introduce yourself? All right, my name
is Eric Cook. I've been a nurse for thirty two years.
(00:51):
I currently work in the cardiac telemetry floor. And I
became a nurse after being a Navy corman in the
First Call War and just continued in healthcare from there.
I was originally an alvin and then became a registered nurse.
And I've been on the past three negotiating teams for
(01:12):
Altabates Summit Hospital and I've seen a lot of changes
in the attitude and movement of the union in the
past twelve years. So I'm hoping with John and Raina
and Mark to make a change for our union and
(01:33):
our members for the better. Yeah, I'm glad, glad you
could be here to join us. Thank you. Yeah, Rina,
do you want to introduce yourself? Hi? There, I'm Rina Lindsay.
I have been a California nurse for over thirteen years,
and out of those thirteen years, eight of them I've
been in Altbate's Medical Center, which was my first union
(01:55):
as an r N. How I be an Also, I'm sorry.
And also i work in ice you and I've been
there through been there for about seven years wow. And
I've worked with Eric a year prior to that. So
(02:17):
the reason why I became a nurse, it is a
long story, but the bridge version is at the beginning,
I wanted to be a lawyer. So when I went
to college, kind of fund I was dyslexic, so that
kind of backed out. And then I also was a
teen mom, which that's something that a lot of people
(02:38):
do not know about me. And during that whole process,
I wanted to find something that I could be an
advocate for people and also know the political side of it.
So nursing became the best benefit. One thing I love
about nursing is you can learn everything about the world,
to know about people without going anywhere, So that was
(03:02):
the thrill. And then also being an advocate for the
patients I take care for. In addition to that, you know,
knowing my peers and knowing that we all have the
similar struggles when it comes to the systems that we
work for. Doesn't matter which employer you work for, and
(03:22):
so being in the union it gives you that way
of a contract between you and your employer. And along
the way there has been some issues which Eric and
I and John all been experiencing where things do need
to change, and being part of shift change is part
(03:46):
where we have to change of leadership and be more
transparent between the union, the employer, and the people in general.
Hell yeah, and yeah, John, do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah? Sure,
I'm John Horronymous. I'm a packy recovery nurse at University
(04:07):
of Chicago. Before that, I was in the medical u
for six and a half years, and then before that
I was like a associate's degree our end working at
the emergency room at holy Cross Hospital. And I also started,
which is funny to me, as an LPN, which is
(04:28):
the same thing as an LVN that Eric did. And
I was a CNA before that. I decided to become
a nurse way back in the day when I was
trying to figure out what I wanted to do after
dropping out of high school, and I was thinking about
man and maybe it should become like a history teacher,
and I was like, oh, why would I want to
go back to this place I hate so much. I
(04:49):
dropped out of it, and I personally got like incredibly
sick with something called uld sort of kalitis, and I
got a bunch of surgeries done and got some really
amazing experience being taken care of by nurses, and it
became really immediately obvious to me, like I also, like Raina,
(05:09):
wanted to help people. And also I thought that nursing
was like a way where even like for you know, individuals,
I could change someone's day just a little bit for
the better, but also like maybe changed some bigger things.
And so I thought nursing was just like a really
great way to do that. Also, it's really fortunate to
(05:30):
be raised by an amazing nurse. My mom was a
nurse and she was always like she's like one of
those people was my hero. And a lot of other
nurses in my family, both men and women, including someone
who is like a Kentucky Frontier nurses, like the first
(05:50):
group of nurse practitioner, nurse midwife back in the like
the nineteen forties, back in Kentucky. So I've got a
lot of nurses in my family and on this like
incredibly proud to be like paring on all the stuff
that they have been doing for all their years as
like nurses. So and like meeting the folks out in California,
(06:14):
like Raina and Eric. It just makes me feel so good,
like we're doing really important stuff in terms of both
our daily practice of being a nurse, but also like
that we can have like this bigger impact on how
things are happening in our profession, in the healthcare industry
and just the broader world. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've talked
(06:37):
like a decent amount on this show now about sort
of the labor issues that have been facing nurses both
actually here and in the UK, and I think a
little bit in a couple of other countries. Yeah, I
was I was wondering what were the sort of specific
things that you all were dealing with, both just in
the profession and then also in the union that got
(06:57):
you all together to run this slate. Okay, So one
of the things that caused us to actually meet by
coincidence was one of my co workers, Torol Doordall, who's
a Norwegian nurse who's been a nurse here in America
for over thirty years. She contacted Labor Notes and, you know,
(07:24):
realizing something was wrong in our union, she started talking
with specifically Sarah Hughes at labor Notes, and through labor
Notes and Sarah, we were able to connect with John
and Chicago, and it was amazing that what we discovered
is that our problems here in California were mimicking what
(07:50):
they've experienced in Chicago, and through Sarah finding out from
other diverse communities of nurses and tech Florida, North Carolina,
New York, in Minnesota that there same things are happening
there under our same union. And our complaint was through
(08:11):
our union was that we felt we were being siloed.
And of course, when I say siloed, is actually in
our negotiations. We had seventeen facilities negotiating, but we were
told that we were not allowed to communicate with each other.
I said it was it was forbidden by the federal mediator.
(08:34):
Now why this is? Yes, yes, I know that was
my reaction initially too. There were two other negotiators on
the team. It was highly suspicious because the union wanted
to put all new nurses onto the negotiating team, and
that was a little bit of a red flag. There
(08:55):
were so many red flags through this negotiations. I swear
I could almost see Lennon's tomb, that's how many red
flags there were. It was amazing to us is that
they said the mediator forbade us from talking to each other,
because that was part of the agreement to have the
federal mediator. The three of us that had previous experience
(09:21):
with negotiating just knew that was the wrong thing. And
it took over at least about seven months before we
started breaking through to other tables and communicating with them
on text and having our own zoom conversations with them
(09:41):
to convince them that no, this is a lie. We
are allowed to talk to each other. And we end
up finding out that we were kind of being railroaded
into what we considered an agreement that was less than
satisfactory for the workers, for the nurses who have suffered
during the pandemic. We could have gotten probably one of
(10:06):
the greatest contracts that any nursing body had ever received.
We had the industry by the throat. We suffered so much,
you know, John, everybody throughout the country, all the nurse
has suffered. Everybody's suffered, but everybody that was at that
bedside during the pandemic, we it was a horrific experience.
(10:32):
It's great when you take care of people and you
heal them, Yes, it's that's a great thing. But the
stress and the you know, the unending anxiety that you felt,
and then in the midst of this you have a
union that short changes you at a point when we
had so much power, and thank Heavens for Sarah to
(10:57):
put us into contact with all these other nurses to
realize that it wasn't just the subter division of the
California Nurses Association that was running things amok. It was
actually it seemed to be a perceived playbook plan of
what they were doing throughout the country. And I think
(11:20):
nobody perceives themselves as doing evil or anything like that.
I think they always think that they're doing it for
the better interest of everybody. But that's what's important about
a rank and file movement is that every nurse, every
person in the union is important and deserves a voice.
(11:43):
And we don't need to be gas lit. We don't
need to be mistreated by the union that we pay
to represent us. We need to be marching on the boss.
We could have had an unending euphoria for nurses with
(12:07):
a contract. We could have had great staffing, we could
have had better pay, we could have had everything that
we wanted to make our work lives to be the
best they could be. And it seemed our union already
had a preplanned agreement with the corporation. Now they deny that,
(12:28):
but it's kind of hard to believe when they had
the same agreement that they were supposedly negotiating in silos
that they weren't communicate. Each table was supposedly negotiating their own,
but it was the same thing they wanted at every table,
and not all the tables were equal. It was very
(12:48):
sad for us. Like I said, this is the third
negotiating team. I was on the first negotiating team I
was on. We lasted over two years negotiating and we
went through nine strikes and threatened at tenth and until
we got an agreement. So our hospital, obviously it's Altibates
(13:09):
Hospital in Berkeley. Our sister hospital, Summit Hospital in Oakland,
and we have affiliated with us, is the Herrot Campus,
which is the the psychiatric facility. And we have struggled
so much through this pandemic and it was amazing to
(13:31):
us that we came up with less than what we
should have gotten. I will tell you that thanks to
Sarah and meeting all these other nurses, we were able
to come back. And I think through fear and intimidation,
our union was forced to back us and we're able
(13:51):
to get economically what we wanted. But like the rest
of the country, as nurses, we wanted better staffing. We
needed more more bodies at the bedside. We're overworked, we're fatigued.
Raina worked in the ICU and they had their own
COVID unit there. Um. I don't think there was enough
(14:15):
tums and roll aids to go around for all of
those nurses. The anxiety and um, you know, the heart
in your throat and of course John himself, I don't
want to his personal business, but you know his experience.
He has long COVID. So we we as nurses, have
suffered quite a bit, and we expected a lot more
(14:38):
from our union. Yeah, and I mean even just on
a very basic level, like no matter what you go through,
you have the right for your union not to light you.
Let's see, this is a very elementary sort of that's
a that's a really elementary thing. Yeah, but like it's
really u it's really scary how comfortable some of the
(15:05):
people who are paid their wages out of our dues
are with lying to us. I think that's a thing
that like, um, you know, like we're one of the
things we're specifically fighting for is like transparency and accountability,
especially for our staff. And you know, when I, you know,
(15:27):
Eric mentioned that I had had long COVID, I'm finally
getting I've been to the point where I'm like as
recovered as I probably ever will be, and which is great.
You know, being recovered from long COVID is so much
better than having long COVID. But you know, I was
always like someone that they came to to ask for
help with like political sorts of issues inside the union,
(15:49):
or they would come to me for Medicare for all
or um you know, speaking around things like ratios that
sort of stuff, or they would send me off to
When the Chicago teachers went on strike in twenty nineteen,
I was sent to speak on behalf of our union
for them, and you know, just doing the work of
I'm kind of a I'm a bit of an agitator.
(16:12):
And then COVID hit and it was just a really
surreal experience. And my area the hospital is one of
those places where they basically did everything they could to
minimize the amount of surgeries we were doing initially when
the lockdowns were happening for the first six months of
(16:33):
the pandemic, and then but they were moving us into
because we are all former ICU nurses, so I would
do my shift a few shifts up in the medical
ICEU than we made a special clean ICEU because we're
still getting traumas. A University of Chicago apparently sees more
penetrating gunshot and stab wounds than any other hospital in
(16:56):
the United States. Thirty percent of our traumas are are
from some sort of violence, which is substantially higher than
anywhere else in the US and then I got sick, right,
and so to me, the union was like a thing.
It was like, man, this is nice to have. I
had never worked at an union hospital before. Getting union
(17:19):
raises was like a big step up in my life,
you know. And it was also like, oh yeah, our
union's progressive, Like I kind of I like most of
the things that it stands for, and I didn't really
think of it as someone that needed the union right
to do the things that unions really kind of like
(17:39):
is the bread and butter of unions, which is like
coming in and like helping you when you need help
as an individual worker, and you know, when you're not
in the middle of like a contract negotiation. And I
got sick with long COVID and lost. We had negotiated
this great you know, like COVID six pay polow see,
(18:00):
and management just took that away without like from me,
without really giving any notice or you know, explaination why.
And you sit there trying to get like the help
that you need from your Union's like I'm trying to
explain why it is that, like this is a problem
for me to our labor rep who's like our they
(18:21):
called them business agents. Labor reps whatever. There are people
who basically are paid out of our dues to kind
of help us in theory like stay organized and be
pushing management to do, you know, to follow the contract.
And it got to the point where like my partner
(18:41):
who's like is like literally screaming at the labor repel.
I'm on the phone with the labor rep and she's
you know, it's just like what the fuck is your
union even doing? Like why are they not making sure
that you are taking care of And it was like
this really like come to Jesus moment where you're like, oh, yeah,
like this union ship isn't just like you know, flat
tudes about like we need a ratio bill in Illinois
(19:03):
or you know, Medicare for all or Bernie Sanders. It's like, oh,
this shit is actually like about my material well being
and like my family still hasn't recovered from all that
because they only you know, after an enormous amount of
pressure was put on staff, they finally started looking into
it and we got you know, payouts for not just me,
(19:25):
but for ten other nurses who had had their COVID
pay like cut, you like really unjust ways and really
opened my eyes as to like what a union should
be doing. Um, and it really opened my eyes that
maybe there's a problem with how staff interact with us
as workers, because like there should be you know, we
(19:49):
try and like say, like you know, there's a service
union service business or service unionism, and then there's rank
and value unionism and we have this weird situation sharing
union where they tell us where a rank and file
democratic union, except the staff kind of treat us like,
you know, it's a business union. So we get told
one thing, but then we see another thing and like
(20:13):
not that I think that like, uh, it's you know,
the whole point of a union, you kind of pull
together to take care of people who can't necessarily take
care of themselves. In that moment, and like it just
took an enormous amount of effort on my family's part
to like get that moving, and it just seemed incredibly
it was as very eye opening for me as a
(20:34):
you know, my experience here in Chicago. No, that that's
really bleak. I mean that that's another thing that you
would you know, you would expect a union like to
just be on top of not not even just a
sort of oh well, you asked them and they started
doing it like you you would think that, hey, the
people who got COVID doing this job not getting paid
(20:57):
what they're supposed to be getting paid would be like
priority and not something you have to fight them over.
That is is incredibly crim I don't know, well, I
(21:18):
haven't a story for you. So my first year working
at out to Bates. Before that, I was working in
Swallow hospitals and they gave you certain packages about your benefits.
So when it was time for me to give my benefits,
I couldn't give my benefits at all because during that
time they were doing it at the yearly. So I said,
(21:38):
is there any way possible at least to get something,
because mind you, they are and for my benefits, I'm
not paying for it anything for it that there should
be a reason because if I had any medical issues,
what would happen? And basically the union was very lackluster
about it. Now, of course I went to the manager,
(21:58):
went to human resource. Basically they basically told me, where
there's eighteen hundred nurses, and you know what we're going
to do about this issue, and pretty much it was.
It has pretty much disappeared about it. There was nothing
I could do so for that whole year. So I
worked in January of two fifteen, I had to wait
(22:22):
till the following year to get benefits. To get medical benefits,
jes Now, I got everything else, so be honest, I
got everything else, But the medical benefits is important. But
thank god I don't have any health issues. Thank god
my daughters didn't have any health issues where we didn't
require any help and there wasn't in an emergency. But
(22:44):
when I started noticing there were other nurses or teas
that were spirits of the same thing. Because a lot
of us got hired within that time frame, they weren't
telling us these issues, and we would end up getting
these things sooner. And it's all about transparency, it's all
about our value. And then over the years, people always complain,
(23:07):
I'm paying these dues, why are they not helping? Why
are not supportive? And when I was actually hired, they
were quick to give you the paperwork to tell you
how to pay this. Also they could take money off
your dues quicker than what about the history about the union?
Why is the history is? Why is the union important?
(23:28):
And what you can do if there's a grievemance? There
was none of that, and to this day it's still
the same thing because I precept new grads and I
tell them about, you know, part of the union. What
he got. Oh I didn't get a booklet or oh
I didn't hear anything about it, but I got this
paper here so they could take out my dues. That's
(23:50):
what pisses me off of anything. Is that part so so?
And then all this stuff dealing with what Eric has
told you, what we've been doing with the strikes and
the negotiations meet. Personally, we should have done negotiated within
the first year the pandemic, and I think we got everything,
(24:11):
but they were quick to say, no, we're going to
get all these facilities all together at one and so
we can all negotiate. And then the gag order happened,
the slam of the gag order, and I'm like, there
is a lot of collusion going on and that shit
needs to stop. So I mean things that they don't
really tell us, which I think is really a thing
(24:33):
that we want to resolve, is they don't really inform
you of what your union rights are. You kind of
get the initial like here's your wine garden rights, which
means that you have a right to representation whenever you're
being disciplined. But aside from that, there's very little discussion
inside of our union facilities, in particular about the kinds
(24:53):
of things that we have as like union members, what
our rights are, what are our rights within the union,
how the union works. So many of my co workers
don't like a big part of our work is just
explaining that there's an election happening. And so you would
hear that an election had happened maybe and you know,
(25:16):
you would be like, well, who voted? I don't know,
like and you'd get these like, you know, all of
the communication from about the election to us as the
people who are like the you know, the opposition has
all been in these very like plane plane envelopes that
don't look like anything like it could be like just
(25:36):
an anonymous bill you wouldn't know or junk mail, and
so like, you know, as a union member, you have
something called a right to represent representation. So and every union,
every union employee and elected officer is considered a fiduciary,
(25:57):
has a fiduciary obligation to look out for your financial
interest us and if they don't do that, it's called
a failure to represent our union in particular, Spends had
brags internally about never having a They called them unfair
labor practice. Like if a nurse or any worker in
any union decides that their union, you know, did not
(26:19):
represent them their financial interests, they can file something called
an unfair labor practice claim for failure to represent. Our
union is like they've never had an unfair labor practice claim.
Stick We've foy had one of their unfair labor practice claims,
and somehow it got like withdrawn like in this really
like sketchy way, and it was like just a random
(26:42):
one that we picked to to see what happened, and
so then it got like assigned like a special like
liaison like afterwards, like they're like, oh, we weren't supposed
to do that, like when we contacted the Department of Labor,
We're going to look at that again and figure out
what's going on with it. And it also turns out
when we started doing research, which I think every union
(27:05):
member listening to this should know, every union has to
file paperwork they're legal. There's legally mandated reporting. So there's
things called LM two's and nine nineties that you can
get from the Office of labor management. You google them
and they'll figure you can search for your own union
and you get to see the union finances. And we
(27:26):
found out that there's like forty two million dollars that
our unions chief in the bank account. And this goes
to there is an article it was in Jacobin I'm
not sure about like the financialization of unions, and we're
like forty two million dollars. What is that? It's like
and they, you know, unions will brags like, oh, we've
got a forty two million dollars war chest, but like,
what are we spending that forty two million dollars on?
(27:49):
Is it to like fight arbitrations and constantly be making
like our like working conditions better and taking fights to
the bosses? And is like no, Actually, what they're doing
is they're spending that money on settling unfairly for practice
claims so they don't actually officially stick. And even against uh,
you know, isn't to go to war against our you
(28:09):
know supposed you know, I mean to go to war
against management. It's to go to war against kind of us.
And you think about it, it's just it's just so
wild when you start digging into this stuff it's just crazy. Um, Eric,
you want to tell them about the office at Oakland. Yeah,
so obviously we're in the heart of the empire. Um.
(28:32):
You know, I live of just a few miles from
the CIENA headquarters and I've been there many times prior
to the pandemic. Um, you know, and I have taken
part in lobbying in Washington, DC on behalf of the union.
You know, nurses from all across the country that are
in the Union go to DC and we lobby for uh,
(28:56):
you know, not only for single payer UH and Medicare
for all, but you know, individual bills that will benefit
nurses across the country, whether they're in the union or not.
And you know, I'm very familiar with it. I've lobbied
in Sacramento, and I've bent to the NNU convention in Minnesota.
(29:16):
So I've met a lot of nurses across our union.
In fact, it's one of the when you do that,
that's about the only time you get to reach out
and see other union members. One of the things I
will tell you that John and I and the person
that's not on the call right now is Mark Goodick.
(29:37):
He is an American citizen now, but he was a
Canadian nurse before, and he is right now working on
our campaign video to introduce us to a broader audience.
And that's why he's not on the call tonight. We
should be intermingling and talking with other nurses across the country.
(30:03):
I should not be siloed here in Oakland and not
knowing that what a nurse is doing in Texas. And yeah,
we need to be part of our pledges that we
need to join hands across this country. Every nurse needs
(30:23):
to see. We need to digitalize our contract. We need
to see University of Chicago's contract digitalized. We need to
be sharing our contracts so we know what good things
that maybe they got in Texas, or what good things
they got at the University of Chicago, or what good
things we have in our contract. We need to see
(30:44):
that nurses can say, hey, I want that language. We
need to be sharing that. I don't know why it's
not happening or why it's just at the upper tiers
of union management that they see these things, but we
need to be joined together. No more siloing nurses. You
know altivates the nurses stay in your lane, Kaiser nurses
(31:08):
stay in your lane. University of Chicago stay in. You're like, no, no, no, no,
we need to be one fighting body for the betterment
of nurses. Uh doubt. You know, it's amazing when you
find out that we have a beautiful building that the
(31:28):
Union purchased in downtown Oakland. Um. You know, they only
occupy a few floors of it and they rent out
the rest, and you know what, it is a fabulous
building and it would be great for it to be
a headquarters where we're we're not just fighting and lobbying
for Democratic politicians, but we're actually fighting for nurses at
(31:55):
the bedside. And that's what you know, our whole mission
is that we're going to be running for is for
the council presidents. We need to take the macro focus
down to what is happening at the bedside for every
nurse across the country and make the change for the
better for them. And that's the big difference here. I'm
(32:19):
all for an activist union and I think and we
have been, the Union is active, and you know climate
change and you know how the environment affects the community.
These things are important, but it's more important that we
take care of the nurses at the bedside and offer
opportunities for those nurses who want to be involved to
(32:42):
make the community better. We need to have those resources
available for them. And if we make nurses lives at
the bedside better, we're going to have more nurses available
to make the community better. And that's what we need
to be working on. It is a it is going
to be a fight. I can't be more more honest
(33:06):
than to tell you we are David versus Goliath. We
are four nurses who really have no big national exposure,
but the most important thing we have is that we're
bedside nurses and we know what's important for bedside nurses.
(33:28):
I do want to say, like, there's four of us
who are running for the for the council presidents, but
we would not be even talking to you if we
didn't have like at least one hundred nurses all over
like the hospitals that we're based in, like doing the
work of building our campaign. So I do want to
(33:49):
point out that, like, because like our slate is like
free white guys and it's RAINA, and RAINA is like
and we want to make sure that we're not that
it's we made. The choice that we made was not
you know, us coming together as four individuals being like,
we should fix the union by ourselves. It was this
(34:13):
we keep mentioning labor notes, there's a healthcare worker chat
with a fair number of nurses in our union. And
we noticed that there was an election coming up. And
this is also at the time when both altbates was
having their issues. And then in Cook County we had
a particularly traumatic firing of a very popular staffer who
(34:34):
without any without any input from the local nurses or
elected local nurse leadership. And we got together and we
all were like, what are we going to do? This
is crazy? And we had people like we are like, well,
who would do? Like we have this opportunity and if
we run as a slate, we can do things like
(34:56):
get access to we can send emails out to other
nurses and break down those silos connect nurses from across
the country. And we're like, well, if we don't do anything,
we're kind of stuck in this kind of like square one.
You know, a few small hospitals talking to each other,
not small, but you know a few hospitals talking to
(35:17):
each other, still struggling against like these kind of silos
that have been constructed for us by staff and we
had a vote and there was you know, over twenty
nurses all together raise their hands and where like, we
could do this with an imperfect group of people that
we recognize asn't like the fully representative of everyone in
the union, but are fully committed to democratizing the union,
(35:42):
or we could sit and wait. And a nurse who
had been in the union for a very long time
and she's now retired, said, if you all don't take
this chance, you don't know what could happen in you know,
three years from now union could be completely different. And
so two thirds of everyone in that call said it's
time to go, and we don't care. We would rather
(36:04):
that you run and take that swing and maybe get
big for all of us. So a big part of
what we're doing is like I've got a meeting with
you know, cook counting nurses on Thursday, and they're all
basically going to come to me and tell me all
the shit that I need to do for them, not
the other way around. When you're the rank and file leadership,
(36:31):
you know, it's like taking that pyramid and you invert it, right.
The people who are matter the most are the regular
bedside nurses and all we can do as like people
who step up into that role is we take that.
We take that heat and put ourselves out there so
that we can enact what our co workers are asking
(36:52):
us for. I literally have co workers walking up to
me completely unsolicited. I'm a very like I'm not walking
around telling I like I told a few people up
front in the beginning, because I was like, all right,
you're about to see my face on some flyers, let
me tell you why. Um. But I now have coworkers
coming to me and they're like, John, you've got to
tell me what's going on because I heard a little
(37:13):
bit about it and I need to help you. I'm
just like, okay, it's very it's like it's a little
bit like a drug. But I have to be careful because,
like I like, I can't let this whole thing like
none of this. We all have to stay humble as
we're doing this. Because all four of us, John, all
four of us were volunteering to help other people to
(37:34):
run exactly. We were like, okay, we're here, you know,
John Mark raining on myself. We're here to help you.
Guys who's running now, I'm going to help you. We're
gonna help you and and then it's like the crickets,
you know, and it's like and it goes to show
(37:55):
exactly what happened. It goes to show how impoverished. The
internal to mycy of our union is that people who
are leaders already did not feel comfortable or prepared to
take on that kind of leadership role. You know, these
are nurses who have been in our union for decades,
who are taking fights to their bosses all the time already,
(38:18):
and they did not feel that they knew enough about
the union because there's an intentional I believe, like obscuring
of how the union works. And that's like how you
end up with a situation where people are like, well,
I guess we're just kicking the door down for all
these people who we know will be doing it better
when when we get it situated so that they can
(38:40):
do it better. It's amazing, though, to tell us that
an America and History class, or you have Civics class,
you learn about the US government, right, you know how
it functions, how it runs. But when it comes to
(39:03):
our union, we were all asking each other, you know,
we're putting pieces together. Oh wait, I know the council presidents. Yeah, well,
how does this person fit into it? How does the
board fit into this? Well, how does the election run?
How is it done? We had no We had to
search out the answers. We had to call all sorts
(39:25):
of people, and we were only getting bits and pieces.
There should be a clear outline of how you run
a democracy and a union. I mean, it shouldn't even
be that difficult. You know, obviously there'd be specific rules
for the union, but they shouldn't be occluded. They should
be you know, there shouldn't be occulted from the members.
(39:49):
We should clearly know how you step forward to be
a more of a contributing member to the union, to
run and to serve the others in the union. And
that was an amazing thing that we're finding out amongst
each other. It's like, wow, how does our union run?
(40:10):
I mean how? Why is it difficult to find out
these things? And I mean I don't think it's insurmountable
for us. I don't think that should disqualify us. I
don't think if we can step in and do healthcare
in a pandemic, we can very easily learn how to
how the union functions, and a quick, a quick little tutorial.
(40:34):
I don't think that's going to be a big deal
for us, but yeah, it's pretty amazing. If we're talking
about democracy in the Union. How is it that it
takes I mean, to find the buy laws. We can
all tell you it took a tremendous amount of effort
to find the by laws that are used runs by.
Hold On, hold on, let me tell sorry about the bylaws.
(40:56):
So we have a nurse in Chicago who decided to
make a pain of themselves about how to get the
by laws, and then instead they went to the union
be like, I want to see the by laws. I
want to see the by laws, and they were less
like you know like, and they give them the runaround.
And essentially they gave him he got a personally delivered
(41:18):
envelope that was like a photocopy of a photocopy of
the photocopy of the by laws. And it's funny because
the legally the by laws are all spopos to be
filed with the federal government. And like, from our pressure
and organizing to figure out how our union worked, they
had to publish the newest set of by laws and
on the federal reporting websites. I was in Oakland in
(41:41):
twenty nineteen for the Global Nurse Assembly, and there was
an after party and it was a bunch of staffers
and like, you know, some nurses and you know, just
chit chatting, and I was like, man, be really good.
I told the story about you know, like the you know,
the nurse you tried to get by finally got a
copy of the by laws to you know, some of
these one of these staffers, like, man, it'd be really
great if we, you know, could figure out how are
(42:04):
you know, getting hints for other union works, and just
as like, good luck with that, and they just disappeared.
Ways I'm not yeah, I mean because because what we're
finding is that at any staff that helped nurses learn
how the union works find themselves out of a job.
(42:25):
Like that's what's really that's what really sketches everyone out
is when like people, I mean, you all can tell
tell the story about the staffer who like got random foul.
So I will tell you that there are a lot
of great labor refers, a lot of really great people
(42:48):
out there, But to tell you that they would communicate
with us, because obviously I told you I've done all
these other actions, so I know a lot of people,
and they have my personal number just because we would
you know, when we're in other cities, you know, you
text each other and hey, we're at this place, now
where do we meet you? Etc. So we were getting
(43:11):
texts from some labor reps in the union saying, you know,
you guys need to stand tall. There are a lot
of us supporting you. We can't come out and publicly
support you because we'll get fired. What So. Yeah, so
we were getting these texts from the labor reps saying
(43:31):
what they're doing to you is wrong, and they were
you know, we actually got together and we we wanted
to go out on strike in October, and we were
getting this runaround from a group of this I thought
they were it was just an inner cabal. Little did
I know that it probably extends throughout the you know,
(43:53):
the organization, but that they were telling us that there
was no need for a strike, and it seemed they
were trying to just pressure us into taking a pretty
lowball contract. And so we're getting push you know, the
good labor reps are texting us like stick it, stick
(44:15):
to it, stick to it. And we actually got a
postcard campaign and we actually drove up to the executive
director's house in Sacramento, knocked on our door and delivered
five hundred some postcards that we organized on our own,
not not with you know, it wasn't a union driven,
it was just nurses union, nurses driven, and we delivered
(44:39):
postcards saying we want to go out on stripe, and
the union, of course still fought us on it, but
we were allowed to go out on stripe. And there's
a video of us confronting the executive director at our
strike line, asking her why we were gagged, why the
mediator gagged us, and she clearly didn't know what was
(44:59):
going She said, the mediator wouldn't dag you, Why would
they gag you? So she didn't even know what was
going on at our table. We then got we were
contacted and they we were told, oh my god, they're
running around like chickens with their heads cut off because
they're petrified that they might use their jobs, that they've
(45:22):
been exposed to what they've been doing to you. And
so one of the labor reps that used to work
for us, she used to be at our hospital, and
then she moved along and she was at Suttersilano and
her nurses were asking Hey, did you see this video
(45:42):
of this speech Eric made on this you know, at
the strike line. And it was a speech where I
kind of excoriated the union about why they would gag us,
that that wasn't you know, we needed to be united
and we didn't need a union, you know, working behind
our back. They needed to stand with us. And so
(46:07):
she says, well, let's see. So she was looking at
the video on her Union cell phone and with the negotiators,
nurse negotiators at her hospitals at Arsalana, who were also
in negotiations with us that we weren't supposed to talk
to because you know, the mediator forbade us. So she's
(46:27):
showing the video and they thought because she was formerly
at our hospital, that she was our inside scoop for
all this information, I can swear to God and take
a lie detector test. I had one exchange with her
during like the twenty one months that we were negotiating,
(46:50):
and it was at a joint Bargaining Council meeting on
zoom where they kept the union kept muting us on
zoom and prevent and preventing us from writing in the
chat because we were saying we want to go out
on strike. We want to go out on strike. And
next thing you know, we would find out we couldn't
type in the in the chat. So I texted her
(47:11):
and says, can you see this, I'm trying to write
in the chat and I'm forbidden from writing in the chat.
They muted me, they I can't type in and she goes,
I'm feel for you, buddy, I feel for you. That
was my only exchange with her that caused her and
the fact that her nurses asked her to look at
this video with them, that's what cost her her job.
(47:35):
She's it was. It was clearly guilt by association and
the charges were outrageous for her. We had labor reps
leave because they just felt that it was they couldn't
live with themselves with what they were doing to the nurses.
It was incredible for them that they're here to work
(47:58):
for the nurses, there to work for the most progressive
union in the country, and it was a fraud. That's
been like a big, like consistent problem is that we
know that they're busting their own like the staff are
supposed to have a union, The staff have their own contract,
and that's a normal thing inside unions, right, yeah, you know,
(48:20):
to keep you know, we believe in or that every
worker who you know works for wages should be in
a union. And we have seen time and again that
like the like the contracts, that they've busted their own unions,
so like that they've there was a slate that was
run of nurses in our not nurses of the staffers.
(48:45):
I think it was in twenty twenty one where they
were like trying to get something together to change you know,
things inside you know, how they relate to their management.
And and several of those uh staff are we're basically
illegally fired. So this is like I mean, and I
(49:05):
know you keep saying Jesus a lot, but like there's
a reason, you know me, I wouldn't be running into
this sort of situation if it wasn't like so like
out of this world. The stories that we hear, and
they're the same. This is what's disturbing, is it? And
it's because the union is baited. Like I was just
(49:25):
talking to a lawyer today. She was looking over the
by laws of our union and she's like, this is
set up like a local like it's one big local union.
It's got like a tiny little committee of people who
are making the decisions of affect or we believe that
it's mostly the director non nurse director staff that make
(49:47):
the decisions, but these four people kind of rubber stamp
them and that they make decisions for one hundred and
fifty you know, thousands some on nurses and it's so centralized.
You know, this is one of the things is describe
as like it's almost irresponsible because you know, we live
(50:07):
in you know, you know, crazy times, and all it
takes is one wrong election or bad decision and Supreme
Court and it would literally our union could be dissolved
with like you know, if they just arrested you know
a handful of people and uh and froze our bank accounts.
And a big part of our goal is to help
(50:31):
disperse those resources out into foster more local leaderships so
that any event that you know, something you know, like
that terrible happens like that, we're not caught without anything.
Because the way it situated now is we have this
massive concentration of of all of the decision making and
(50:52):
resources in a very small group of hands, and most
of these people are are not have never been nurses,
or if they've been nurses. They've been out of practice
for so long that they wouldn't know how. I mean,
maybe they can put band aids on. I don't need to, like,
I don't want to disparage anybody. You know, a nurse
(51:12):
is a nurse. I know nurses. You know, you learn
it and you learn a lot of things. It's really important,
great skill, but there's something to be in practice. If I,
you know, I can walk back into the medical issue
I used to work in, you know now it's going
on like five years and be the same nurse that
I was when I was at the peak of my
practice there. And there's a real key thing too. I
(51:34):
think we're all committed. None of us are doing this
because we want to be the face of California Nurses
Association National Nurses United for the next twenty like thirty years.
We're doing this because we feel that there's a real
value to there being a continual turnover in leadership, new ideas,
(51:55):
people bringing in new energy. We think that nurses should
have the opportunity to work release time so that they
could see how the union works as staffers from the
inside and then go back to the regular jobs. We're
doing everything we can to like I like my job.
I think my job is great. I don't want to
leave my job. But doing what we can to bring
(52:18):
our mentality as those bedside nurses to the sensibility of
running the union, because nursing does give you a lot
of really powerful tools, as like you have to be
able to listen to people. We're not listening a lot tonight,
but you know, we've got to talk and get the
word out. Being able to kind of see. A big
(52:40):
thing we see is like, you know, you have a
lot of people who will tell you things and then
they act in a different way. And that's a big
part of nursing practices, being able to understand what people's
real deal is, and you know, it's kind of that's
one of the things where it's real frustrating, is like
we know when people are lying to us, Like I know,
(53:03):
we all know when like the staff are lying to us.
Nurses do have bullshit detectors, that's for sure. You know.
I slept through the class in nursing school where they
teach you how to grow eyes in the back of
your head. The class I slept through where they teach
you to get a through arm. And I really regret
sleeping through the class where they teach you how nurse
(53:24):
mitosis like being able to asexually reproduce an extra nurse.
But I definitely didn't sleep through the class where I
can learn where I can see when someone is saying
one thing and then but it's like what they're fucking
lying to me? Yeah, And that's a that's like a
constant theme. And that's one of the things that's driving
a lot of our organizing is that a lot of
(53:44):
people are tired of just being lied to by people
who were paying their paychecks. And it's like and it's
like they think that we I mean, we have staff informants, right,
we know people inside staff who are allied with us.
We know how they talk about us when we're not there.
They talk about us like we can't figure this shit out,
(54:05):
And it's like, motherfucker. I know how to keep a
person alive who like who shouldn't be alive, Like I
know how to walk a family through like you know,
multiple family members with conflicting opinions through like an end
of life discussion, and along with a doctor who can't
really make up his mind, like you don't think it
while I've got you know, like multiple pressors and like
(54:27):
continuous dialysis. You don't think I can't figure out, Like
when you are like telling us one thing and then
another thing's happening. We know why they're canceling meetings right now.
They don't want us talking to each other where we
get that and this is kind of like it's it's
almost like a feminist practice, like of women talking to
each other makes men nervous, right, And it's like nurses
(54:52):
talking to each other makes management nervous, and it sure
as hell is making our union nervous. We want our
union to be encouraging nurses talking to each other and
not like discouraging it. And anytime someone is discouraging people
from talking to each other who have similar concerns, that
is an immediate you know, like Eric was saying the
(55:12):
red flags. It's like this is the kind of thing
that like this, it's like an almost an abusive relationship.
You know, I would not be running if it wasn't
this intense of a problem this has been. It could
happen here. Join us tomorrow for two of the interview,
where Shift Change discusses more of their vision for what
the union could be in the meantime, you can find
(55:33):
us on Twitter or Instagram That Happen Here pod, and
you can find cool Zone Media the same place as
at cool Zone Media. We've also posted a link in
the description to Shift Changes go fund me if you
want to help support their campaign. It could Happen Here
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
(55:56):
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen podcasts. You can find sources for
It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolson Meta dot
com slash sources. Thanks for listening
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.