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August 20, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has been a largely unmitigated disaster. More than half a million Americans have died as a result of the virus. Through it all, nurses, nursing assistants, respiratory therapists, other healthcare professionals, and the various staff that keep our hospitals running have been worked to the bone. Without the efforts of these workers, including the workers who we represent across the state of Wisconsin, many more would have tragically lost their lives. As if healthcare workers weren’t a vital part of society before, the debt they are owed after what they’ve struggled through over the past year and a half is vast. Despite the service of these workers to the communities in which they live and beyond, the healthcare corporations that they are employed by have not done enough to reciprocate these efforts. At several junctures over the course of the pandemic, employers have refused to offer bonuses for essential workers, failed to provide ample Personal Protective Equipment, failed to provide proper medical equipment, failed to provide proper staffing, and failed to produce appropriately safe working conditions. To sum it up, corporate healthcare employers have failed their workers and the people to whom they provide care. While the frontlines were starved for support, it was the bottom lines that received the reinforcements. This behavior isn’t new on the part of these corporations, but the stark differences between their words and their actions has never been more clear than now. MORE

On 12/2/20, our union sent a letter to high level corporate executives at Ascension Wisconsin and to the local administration of St. Francis Hospital outlining the ways in which the disrespect of frontline staff and their union have directly contributed to the incredibly difficult working conditions in the hospital. WFNHP respectfully demanded the immediate implementation of a paid leave program for all frontline workers to deal with COVID-19 related illness; hazard pay for all healthcare workers in their employ; and a genuinely collaborative approach to stabilizing the staffing crisis in the hospital. We laid out the timeline of events since the beginning of the pandemic that clearly demonstrate our repeated attempts to protect and respect our nurses and health professionals and the ways in which we attempted to bring about concerning issues related to staffing and quality care between March and November of this year. MORE

When healthcare workers show up to work, they shouldn’t have to worry about whether a patient is going to hurt them. Violence should never be a part of the job.

Workplace violence has touched the lives of many of our members. One of them, Patricia "Patt" Moon-Updike, RN, will be testifying before the U. S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Workplace Protections at the hearing entitled "Caring for Our Caregivers: Protecting Health Care and social Service Workers from Workplace Violence" this Wednesday, Febrary 27, 2019, in Washington, D.C., to tell her story. 

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