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AFT Health Care Fall 2023 Issue Cover

The goal of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (WFNHP) Code Red campaign is to engage healthcare workers in healing our healthcare system and making it sustainable again—which our members and our patients desperately need. The corporate model of healthcare prizes the bottom line over the frontlines and over patient safety. It has driven healthcare workers to the breaking point. The pandemic lit healthcare on fire, laying bare its structural issues and demonstrating just how unsafe and unsustainable corporate healthcare’s “do more with less” approach is.

For years, our

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Randi Weingarten at a Massachusetts high school

Summer is upon us, and parents, children and teachers are winding down from what has been an exhausting and fully operational school year—the first since the devastating pandemic. The long-lasting impact of COVID-19 has affected our students’ and families’ well-being and ignited the politics surrounding public schools. All signs point to the coming school year unfolding with the same sound and fury, and if extremist culture warriors have their way, being even more divisive and stressful.

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What unions do

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In AFT President Randi Weingarten’s latest New York Times  column, she describes what it is exactly that unions do. Though unions are the most popular they have been in decades, anti-union sentiment still thrives in red states and across the nation. “Several years ago, The Atlantic ran a story whose headline made even me, a labor leader, scratch my head: ‘Union Membership: Very Sexy,’” Weingarten writes in the column. “The gist was that higher wages, health benefits and job security—all associated with union membership—boost one’s chances of getting married. Belonging to a union doesn’t actually guarantee happily ever after, but it does help working people have a better life in the here and now.” Click through to read the full column.

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St. Francis Hospital brought babies into this world for decades and decades. Cruelly, however, Ascension chose to close the only labor and delivery unit on the southside of Milwaukee when it abruptly closed the service at St. Francis Hospital only days before Christmas. St. Francis is also the only unionized private sector hospital in the city.  

The southside of Milwaukee is home to a significant immigrant, Latinx, and working class population who rely on the accessibility of the hospital for many needs. Pregnant women and families must now travel outside of their communities to deliver their

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Our union members have been fighting for quality care and safe staffing, and now we must fight together as a community. Join the Coalition to Save St. Francis Hospital Facebook page for updates on our fight to save labor & delivery and other services at St. Francis Hospital on the south side of Milwaukee. Click here: https://bit.ly/3HvRFAi MORE
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The Coalition to Save Saint Francis is gathering to demand that the City Council take action to maintain labor and delivery services on the South Side of Milwaukee! Join us for a press conference and rally on Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 6PM in front of Milwaukee City Hall, 200 E. Wells St., Milwaukee, WI. RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1498888043966718 MORE
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Ascension announced that they are closing all labor and delivery services at St. Francis Hospital, the only labor and delivery services on the southside of Milwaukee, effective just days before Christmas. This will cause all southside patients to have to travel out of their neighborhood and will eliminate dozens of union jobs. We must fight back to preserve these vital services for our community. MORE

AFT report: Healthcare staffing is in crisis

After three years of unprecedented challenges, healthcare workers are exhausted and their facilities dangerously understaffed. A groundbreaking new report by our national union, the American Federation of Teachers, brings together data and testimony from frontline workers. It details crippling staff shortages across the healthcare industry, revealing dangerous conditions for patients and healthcare professionals alike, made worse by profit-driven corporate leadership. According to the report, and as our union and members know all too well, healthcare workers are exhausted, burnt out, anxious and leaving the profession in droves. Since the pandemic, nearly 1 in 5 healthcare workers have quit their jobs. Learn more about the report, which lays out the issues in detail and offers potential solutions.

 

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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
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The American Rescue Plan. Finally, we’re seeing another round of COVID relief. Last time, with the CARES Act, employers and large corporations received a significant benefit while regular people were left needing more. Things are a little bit different this time. Here are 20 ways the American Rescue Plan supports working people, per the AFL-CIO. Additionally, check out what we can expect in Wisconsin as a result of this bill

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