New Study Outlines Path to Safeguard Quality Patient Care and Healthcare Jobs in Lynn

As you know, healthcare workers are at an increased risk of contracting the virus and unknowingly passing it along. We know it has been especially challenging to protect yourself and your family as flu season and the surge in the ongoing pandemic have collided, creating the potential for a “twindemic” that threatens to pressure our already stressed healthcare system.

As promised, 1199SEIU is doing all we can to provide education and resources to keep our membership informed and updated about COVID-19, vaccinations, and the guidelines and protocols necessary to keep us safe and healthy.

Just as healthcare workers have fought in the current pandemic to heal America, they also face the work of healing themselves. Every day, healthcare workers bear witness to severe illness and mass death while simultaneously tending to dozens of patients requiring previously unseen levels of care. At the same time, they are also fighting to protect themselves and their families from the novel coronavirus, and too often, they must heal themselves and/or family members after infection. Add to that health care’s pre-existing structural problems: susceptibility to worker burnout, and an already marginalized workforce that is overwhelmingly Black, Brown, and female.

As New York State’s Buffalo Niagara Region comes up against a second wave of the coronavirus, the area’s Catholic Health (CH) hospital system is relying on a strong foundation of preparedness and lessons learned during February’s COVID-19 outbreak.

In what is arguably the most consequential presidential election in American history, 1199ers overcame the challenges of a global pandemic and helped Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump. Now, members are setting about the work of undoing the damage done by four years of Donald Trump while at the same time battling COVID’s second wave.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed two bills on Oct. 23 ordering historic reforms to the Garden State’s long-term care industry. The laws are the culmination of a years-long battle to improve conditions for New Jersey’s long-term care workers and the residents for whom they care. 1199ers have been at the forefront of the struggle, so the day was one of pride and emotion.

After a protracted struggle that spanned over a year and through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers at NYU Winthrop University Medical Center in Mineola, NY, have their first collective bargaining agreement as members of 1199SEIU.

Cathy Mahar, a first assistant surgery RN at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Buffalo since 1987, grew up with the Golden Rule, and it’s one of the reasons she became a nurse. “I wanted to take care of others, and people who are sick,” she says. Mahar’s parents were her biggest supporters, encouraging her into the profession. She credits her high school ROTC program with encouraging her toward the education and discipline she needed to become a nurse

1199SEIU member Genevieve E. Smith has been named to a new SEIU Healthcare Worker COVID Advisory Committee that will advise the Biden Administration’s COVID Task Force. The Committee will ensure that the experiences and perspectives of healthcare workers are included in the Biden administration’s COVID response: they will make recommendations and virtually meet with Task Force members as they plan the continuing battle against COVID-19.

Registered Nurses New York Presbyterian-Queens in Flushing held an informational picket Nov. 9 to demand that management settle a new contract that protects their healthcare and retirement benefits and provides higher wages.