This Labor Day, South Florida healthcare workers and our communities who depend on them face a treacherous storm of massively slashed funding and menacing immigration tactics that will impact thousands of jobs and the delivery of critical care across the state.

But with such deep threats in front of them, caregivers and working people are standing up to fight these extreme policies from Washington, D.C. and the White House, and this Labor Day it’s time for workers to make audacious demands of their own.     

The dangerous funding cuts are part of the recent “big, ugly bill” pushed by the White House and passed by GOP majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, stripping about $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years.  Nationally, it’s estimated that 16 million people will lose health coverage because of the cuts and bill’s failure to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credit.  Florida, and South Florida especially, will be hit the hardest due to this area’s reliance – the highest in the nation – on these essential programs.

Patients will lose care. Caregivers will lose their jobs. People will die.

The cuts will hurt our most vulnerable Floridians including children, veterans, the disabled and seniors. Care for about four in seven residents of Florida nursing homes is supported by Medicaid.

Due to this legislation our public safety net hospital Jackson Memorial anticipates losing $100 million annually that would otherwise cover services to patients and salaries for those providing care.  

Combine these funding cuts with the chaos of ICE raids and other cruel Trump Administration immigration policies, and we have the perfectly bad storm for our healthcare system in South Florida. A substantial portion of hospital and especially nursing home workers here are originally from other countries.  They have come to work hard, support their families, and provide compassion and care to our loved ones and community members who are sick, elderly and in need.

A great number of these committed caregivers soon will be losing their TPS status and employment eligibility. So many others, even with all the necessary paperwork to reside and hold jobs here, are showing up to work in fear of being swept up in a “zip-tie first, ask questions later” ICE raid.

Recently, in just one Miami nursing home that serves about 100 patients, 30 caregivers were let go due to immigration concerns by their employer.  

We already have been suffering a critical healthcare staffing shortage since the Covid 19 pandemic, so who will be left to care for our communities when the funding and job cuts truly hit, and the immigration purge intensifies?

The fact that the colossal healthcare cuts and misery coming to our communities is largely to pay for even more massive tax breaks for billionaires is especially appalling to our  1199SEIU healthcare union members.  While serving the ultra-rich, the regime in Washington seems to believe healthcare is minimum wage work, that workers need to hold three jobs to pay their bills, and work until they’re 80 to survive.  They are wrong.

So, in the spirit that first inspired Labor Day, healthcare workers are boldly speaking out.  We are calling on the White House and Congress to reverse the deadly cuts to Medicaid. Politicians passed this ghastly bill, they can create a truly good one, with meaningful protections for workers and communities.

We boldly demand Medicaid expansion and healthcare for all; for corporations to raise pay and stop exploitation; proper Investments in schools, housing, Social Security, and public health; universal worker rights to organize and bargain collectively; billionaires taxed their fair share so they give back what they’ve taken from the rest of us; and more.

On this Labor Day, for the well-being of our families and communities, workers must  unite and unleash a powerful storm of our own.

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Roxey Nelson is Executive Vice President of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest union of hospital and nursing home caregivers in Florida.