Turn on the water. Make Wall Street pay.

Thousands of registered nurses, community, labor, environmental and community activists marched in Detroit today in a resounding protests against the shutoff of water to tens of thousands of city residents – an action the marchers called a wanton violation of human rights that creates a public health emergency.

Brandishing signs that read “Water is a Human Right,” “Turn on the Water. Tax Wall Street,” “Water = Life,” “Blame Chase,” “Make the Banks Pay,” and “Nurses are the Real Emergency Managers,” marchers streamed through downtown Detroit to a big rally in front of the city/county building after a stop at a branch of Chase bank.

Their message: Turn on the water. Restore the water for those who were cutoff. Tax Wall Street to raise the money needed to revitalize cities and communities like Detroit harmed by the Wall Street created economic crash of 2008.

And they voiced emphatic opposition to the corporate policies of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and his undemocratically appointed emergency city manager who have declared a bankruptcy in Detroit and moved to privatize public resources, such as the water supply.

Jean Ross, RN, co-president of National Nurses United, the lead sponsor of the action, delivered a declaration calling the city of Detroit to be a public health emergency zone, supporting the call of numerous city activists of the health crisis prompted by the shutoff.

“Water is life sustaining. Lack of water directly undermines the health and safety of Detroit residents, and their families,” the NNU declaration read.

“For optimal health in our daily lives, we need clean water for drinking. Infants, children, and the elderly are particularly vulnerable; they are more susceptible to dehydration, infection, and disease without access to water.  

“We need clean water for proper sanitation to combat the growth and spread of multiple infectious diseases and pandemics. We need clean water for a safe and healthy environment. We demand the guarantee that all Detroit residents have immediate and full access to clean water,” said Ross.

Actor Mark Ruffalo, joining the march, encouraged the crowd to “fight for your rights, water is a human right.”

“We’re happy to send money all over the world to help other people in their crisis, and we can’t take care of our own people. The American people have got to know that this is wrong, and that it’s happening here and that it should be stopped,” Ruffalo said.

Addressing the crowd United Auto Workers Union President Dennis Williams noted that “the government didn’t give us the water, it is a natural resource. It is the peoples’ resource. It is not owned by corporations, it is not owned by city hall, it’s owned by the people of this land. It is our job united together to take back our government.” 

Maureen Taylor, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization chair noted “We hold the corporations responsible for this mess. Turn the water on.”

Rep. Keith Ellison, author of HR 1579, the Inclusive Prosperity Act, also known as the Robin Hood tax proposed an alternative. “Instead of shutting peoples water off why don’t we raise the taxes on these corporations? We have a bill that would tax the transactions on stocks, bonds and derivatives so people can meet their basic needs like water.”

“Make the banks pay,” people chanted. “Turn on the water now.”

“We need to link what’s happening in Detroit with what’s happening across the country,” said journalist and author John Nichols, linking the fight in Detroit to attacks on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. “If there’s a place where the fight must begin, it’s here. “If they deny us water, how can any other right have meaning?”  

“In Detroit, 82 percent voted against an emergency manager system, 95 percent voted against Gov. Snyder. So how can Gov. Snyder create an emergency management system that shuts down water for the people of Detroit. It is politically wrong, it is morally wrong,” Nichols said.

Rep. John Conyers of Detroit Conyers presented a message to the city water department to “Keep their paws off our water. Get the corporations to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars they owe..”

Michigan Nurses Association President John Armellegos, RN, noted that “Detroit is not bankrupt. Denying water is another sign of a bankrupt system. Only a bankrupt system would encourage predatory subprime mortgages that lead to the foreclosures of over 100,000 homes in this city and deny opportunities for work when so much is needed in this city. This city, state and nation must engage in policies that promote prosperity and recovery.”  

“Privatization of water has already started harming Michiganders,” said We the People of Detroit Founder Monica Lewis-Patrick. “This issue is beyond Detroit. Detroit is the tip of the spear. It’s not about one thing. It’s about everything. As goes Detroit, so goes Michigan and so goes the nation. Stop the privatization. Restore the water.”

Ensure Strong Patient Advocacy and Collective Bargaining Rights

Certain Veterans Affairs (VA) professionals gained the right to bargain collectively in 1991. They have the right to negotiate, file grievances, and arbitrate disputes over working conditions, except for matters concerning or arising out
of professional conduct or competence, peer review, or compensation (Section 7422 of Title 38 of the U.S. code). However, over the last several years, the interpretation of the statute’s exemptions to collective bargaining has broadened considerably, leaving workers with few meaningful collective bargaining rights.

These exemptions are unfortunate for both workers and patients. The collective bargaining process is key to providing healthcare that is centered on the patient. Registered nurses (RNs), as the frontline workers in the healthcare system, have a right and a duty to be patient advocates. As such, they are quite motivated and well qualified to advocate for the highest quality care available for the heroic men and women who have laid their lives and
health on the line in defense of our nation. Previous legislation to remove such restrictions was supported by the Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and Vietnam Veterans of America.

S. 1556 (introduced by Senators Brown, Begich and Merkley) and H.R. 4580 (introduced by Representatives Schiff, Honda, Walz and Van Hollen) would bring the collective bargaining rights of RNs
at the VA in line with those of other VA clinicians, such as LPNs, nursing assistants, and nursing unit clerks. These bills would also give RNs at the VA the same rights that RNs at other agencies are entitled to, such as at the Department of Defense. 

Please support S. 1556 and H.R. 4580 to remove the exemptions to Section 7422 of Title 38. It is a matter of basic fairness and patient safety.

Download the flyer

And see the letters NNU sent to congress about working conditions at VA facilities

Letter to Senators and Representatives

Letter to Senators

Your Comments Needed Today

—FDA Debating Regulations on Health Information Technology-DEADLINE—July 7

 
The US Food and Drug Administration, (FDA), is now taking public comments on how (and if) it should regulate Health Information Technology (HIT) and Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems.
 
The FDA has already suggested that it thinks that regulation of these systems is NOT necessary! They need to hear your voice to protect our patients.
 
As direct-care registered nurses we are acutely aware of the rapid spread in the use of unproven electronic health records and other forms of medical technology and the untested implications for patients.    
 
You know first-hand the problems that arise when technology is rolled out that may be skill displacing, not skill enhancing, and when RNs are hampered by a system design in making autonomous judgments in response to the protocols directed by the computer programs. And how the systems take RNs away from the patients to interact instead with patients – as one RN said this week, “the computer is now my 5th patient.”

Hospitals are spending tens of billions on buying health IT systems and it is vital to ensure we have protections for public safety that also safeguards the patient advocacy role of RNs.
 
It is critically important that you take a few minutes to send comments using your personal experiences and observations as a bedside RN to make the points below as applicable.
 
You may draft your own comments, or use one of the forms by inserting a short description of your own experience with the dangers of these tools that attempt to fit real live, individual patients into preprogrammed care plans.

Submitting Comments

Click here to submit comments to the FDA
 
Short sample version:
 
HIT (Health Information Technology) IS DANGEROUS: I have been a registered nurse for ___ years. As an RN I have witnessed firsthand the dangers of health information technology. [Examples__________].

Finally, the regulations should explicitly state that RNs and other licensed caregivers have the right to use their professional judgment to override health information technology in the interest of individualized patient care and safety.

Instructions for posting comments

___Comments due: Jul 07, 2014 11:59 PM ET___
 
It’s probably best to work on your comments before going to the website and then paste them into the comment box after you are finished.

Click here to submit comments to the FDA

Step 1: Your information

• Enter comments
• Option to upload files
• Enter First and Last name
• Option to check boxes
  
  • I want to provide my contact information
  • I am submitting on behalf of a third party (Do not check)
• Enter category: Health Professional – A0007 (or as applicable)

Step 2: Your preview

• You will see your comments and can either edit or submit comment.

Step 3: Your receipt

Here’s an NNU commentary on the problems with healthcare technology
 
See our national public advocacy campaign on the issue

If you listen to the lobbyists for medical device manufacturers and many of their best friends forever in the healthcare industry and Washington, health IT is the answer to our biggest healthcare troubles, from medical errors to the high costs of care.

America’s registered nurses, who interact with the machines and have to implement their regimen, all too often have a very different daily experience.

We’ve launched a national campaign intended to emphasize the point that all that glitters is not gold.

Our campaign describes a number of changes occurring in healthcare delivery at the bedside that RNs believe are putting patients at risk.  These include the premature discharge of patients to other settings, including the home, where the burden for care falls entirely on family members.

A central theme of our message is about the rapid spread of unproven medical technology and the untested implications for patients. That concern is captured, with a humorous vent, in this video and this radio ad.

Obviously, with the tens of billions the hospitals are spending on buying health IT systems, and the more than $23 billion the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has paid in incentives to hospitals and other providers since 2011 to implement them, the machines are not likely going away soon.

National Nurses United has long held that technology should be skill enhancing, not skill displacing, that doctors and RNs should not be mere adjuncts to machines that supplant their professional expertise, experience, education, and judgment.

While problems with the electronic health records have garnered some limited notice, much less has been said about the bedside computers.

Bedside computers today are increasingly used to provide a diagnosis of the patient’s condition, determine a prognosis of whether to continue or withdraw care, and, if care is permitted, to set out treatment protocols.

Typically, those directives are based on a misapplication of the concept of population-based health, which assesses the patient and determines the protocols and treatment options based on a similar set of conditions or patients.

But you can’t treat everyone like an identical Model T Ford. Human beings are not steel girders, they are organisms that adapt and react uniquely.

When you are just following a computer protocol, it can leave out multiple other variables that can affect the source of the patient’s illness and what is needed for their treatment and recovery based on that individual, not some other patient or group of patients. Each patient can respond differently, and does.

That’s where the skill and judgment comes in, something lacking in HAL 9000 or the FRANK of our video. What is needed for the patient is still best determined by the personal interaction of the doctor and the RN with the individual patient.

And to a growing extent, the directives of the machines are not recommendations but mandates, tied to economic incentives under the threat of discipline for the caregiver who does not follow the computer order and toe the line exactly.

To qualify for the federal incentive payments, hospitals and doctors must show “meaningful use.” This includes using what is sometimes labeled clinical decision support, the computers. They can choose not to follow what the computer suggests and still get the money, but more and more they face organizational pressure to adhere to guidelines.

Not surprisingly, what is mostly behind those decisions is money. Federal incentives and reimbursements are in place because of massive lobbying by the health information technology industry, supported by other healthcare giants, and woe betide those who stand in the way.

The technology generates profits for healthcare corporations who standardize treatment protocols based on a model of care that is derived from earlier experiences on the factory floor.  The results were not always great in the industrial sector as the recent GM scandal might illustrate, and in healthcare the life and death consequences are even more pronounced.

Ultimately, the proliferation of health IT and the restrictions it places on caregivers is another reminder of how misguided the priorities of our broken healthcare system have become.

It’s the reason NNU and America’s nurses will never stop our broader campaign, for a transformation from a health care industry based on profit and greed to one based on a comprehensive, humane, single standard of care system for everyone based on individual patient need.

Memorial Medical Center RNs speak out: YES for CNA

With support from their Sutter colleagues at Tracy, Eden, Alta Bates Summit, Delta, Roseville, CPMC Pacific, St. Luke’s; and from Bakersfield Memorial, Children’s Hospital of Oakland, St. Rose, St. Joseph’s, Doctor’s Medical in Modesto & Kaiser Modesto, MMC RNs say YES for CNA.

Labor allies showing their support for MMC RNs saying YES to CNA.

Community groups and labor allies support RNs organizing for a voice and safer patient care! North Valley Labor Federation, Stanislaus-Tuolumne Central Labor Council, Modesto Firefighters Local 1289 CSEA, Modesto Peace Life Center, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Teamsters Local 601, Communications Workers of America & IBEW 595 support MMC RNs for CNA!

Show of support for MMC RNs saying YES to CNA.

“The inexcusable waiting lists are symptoms of deeper problems,” said Irma Westmoreland, RN, chair of Veterans Affairs for National Nurses United and a registered nurse at the Augusta, Georgia VA Medical Center. “The VA is suffering from a tragic lack of resources that leads to delays in care, it spends resources in ways that do not benefit veterans, and it does not sufficiently empower front line caregivers to act as patient advocates.”

Irma Westmoreland, RN

Chair NNU-VA
Vice President National Nurses United (NNU)

She has been a Registered Nurse for 26 years. As a union leader for over 12 years she has assured and maintained a strong compliance to work place safety regulations for nurses. She has served in the Nursing Safety office for the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center and is a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on Safety and Health

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Nurse Talk Exclusive with RN and Host Casey Hobbs, Sutter Modesto Memorial Medical Center RN’s Sharon Waite and Melanie Thompson.

“There comes a time when you have two choices, to do something or nothing–we choose to do something,” RN Sharon Waite.

On June 26 & 27th Sutter Modesto Memorial Medical Center RN’s will cast their votes for or against joining California Nurses Association. It takes courage to fight for what you think is right. This has been a two year battle for the nurses against a very powerful hospital corporation. If you listen to Melanie and Sharon, you will hear two very sensible, passionate, compassionate nurses who want whats best for their patients, their fellow nurses and their community.

In a low turnout primary election earlier this month, California political analysts had to scurry to find messages from the voters. Here’s one that some missed. We’re not ready to turn into the latest cookie-cutter anti-union state.

What would you call California if we lost our vital labor movement? A state that looks a lot like what has happened in Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, all of which recently enacted laws intended to decimate labor unions.

In so-called right to work states, now including Michigan and Indiana, wages average $1,500 a year less, fewer employers offer health insurance, and workplace deaths are higher.

In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker boasted of a coming economic boon after his high profile attack on unions, less than a third of the jobs he promised have materialized and funding for schools has plummeted.

At their best, unions are a voice not just for their members, but for all everyone who falls within that broad demographic swath we might call the working class, or the 99 percent.

That means not just taking a stand in the workplace for a decent quality of life for workers, but for safer workplaces and public settings. It means fighting for economic justice, for health security and quality care, for better schools, for decent housing for all. It means speaking out for a clean and safe environment and the ability to retire in dignity.

It’s why voters in California’s 16^th Assembly District chose not to send a Democratic version of Scott Walker to Sacramento.

Steve Glazer had hoped to win his election from that district on a platform of demonizing labor unions, especially for public employees.

His call to “ban transit strikes,” blazoned on billboards and broadcast on radio and TV ads across the Bay Area, were the underpinnings of a broader goal to permanently weaken California’s labor movement.

Without the right to strike unions have little effective means to protect the living standards of their members and their families, and to work on behalf of the public safety issues that received so little media notice during the BART fight last year.

What Glazer and his corporate and conservative funders surely know is that shredding the rights and strength of public workers unions is a major opening shot toward rolling back the rights of workers in private sector unions as well.

The success of far right, anti-union national actors, such as the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), in eviscerating union and worker rights in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana, often by targeting public employees first, illustrate the point.

An assault on unions is also intended to diminish the voice of working people in state politics, where unions are often the only ones able to challenge the profit-focused priorities of wealthy corporate powers.

Glazer adopted his anti-worker election strategy after working as a $15,000-per-month consultant to the California Chamber of Commerce, the lobbying arm of corporate California that has long used its outside influence in Sacramento to bury legislation for safer workplaces, rights for workers, and public protections it deems would dent profits.

During Glazer’s tenure, major funders of the group included tobacco giant Phillip Morris, along with pharmaceutical companies, banks, and oil companies, all of whom are frequently at odds with workers and public interest advocates.

The business love continued after Glazer left the Chamber and jumped into his race.  The conservative California Real Estate PAC spent nearly $1.9 million hoping to elect him, with additional funding from the Chamber.

Vilifying unions does not make one a “maverick” or an “independent,” especially when your campaign is financed by major corporate interests, and the voters were not deceived.

Working men and women, including many union members, were able to break through the glitzy ads and media endorsements by some old fashioned grassroots politicking. Nurses, teachers, and firefighters, along with former students of candidate Tim Sbranti, who finished well ahead of Glazer, talked to voters in the hundreds.

California is no closer to becoming another notch in the belt for the Koch brothers.  Working people and the communities whose interests we share were successful in uniting to stop this attack and our collective ability to fight for the social and economic justice issues that impact all of us –from healthcare to environmental protections and workplace safety standards.

There’s a lesson for California’s political establishment, too.  Glazer said his goal was also, “redefining what it means to be a Democrat” in California.  Voters in the 16h Assembly District sent a different message. We don’t need any Scott Walker-lights in California, even those who brand themselves Democrats in a blue state.

Even with the low turnout, the June election was a reminder that in California big business is not the only voice that matters.  Working people understand we need to keep on fighting, and knowing that with unity we can win.

Just ask Steve Glazer.

Deborah Burger is a registered nurse and co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.

Once again the California Hospital Association is mounting a crusade that the survival of the multibillion-dollar California hospital industry is in grave jeopardy.

The threat? Earthquakes? Climate change? Godzilla? Not exactly. The big threat is AB 503, a bill that would let the public know whether non-profit hospital corporations justify their enormously profitable tax-exempt status by providing sufficient charity care and community benefits.

In a recent Capitol Weekly column the head of the lobbying arm for the well-heeled California hospital industry wrote that AB 503 “is a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Apparently they forgot to tell the California State Auditor and the California Legislative Analyst Office, both who have separately observed that a problem, in fact, does exist.

In 2012, for example, the Legislative Analyst noted there is “no federal, state, or local requirement on the amount of charity care that nonprofit California hospitals must provide in order to maintain their non-profit and tax exempt status.”

That same year the State Auditor issued its second report in five years recommending the legislature amend state law to include requirements for the amounts of community benefits non-profits should provide and define a methodology for setting uniform standards.

As Principal Auditor Grant Parks put it more colorfully in a legislative hearing in 2012, state law on what counts as community benefit is “fairly permissive… it’s like the Wild West of what is required.”

AB 503 is a response to those recommendations. It would clearly define what charity care is – the direct provision of care to the uninsured and under insured. And what it is not – for example, declaring a “loss” on payments it did not collect for wildly inflated charges in a state where hospitals, on average, set their charges at four and a half times their costs.

Community benefit programs under AB 503 must go to actual health improvement programs, such as vaccinations for low-income families, chronic illness prevention, and school based health centers. Marketing and promotional activities, like handing out headbands and water bottles with your corporate logo at 10k races, or sponsorship of sports teams and events, would not qualify as a “community benefit.”

AB 503 also would improve reporting requirements on how and if the non-profit giants are really meeting their charity care and community benefit moral imperative. Maybe that’s why they are in such a panic over the bill.

Or maybe the hospital industry executives are just embarrassed that for-profit hospitals, which also provide charity care, do not get the same lucrative tax-exempt gift handed to non-profit hospitals.

A 2012 California Nurses Association research study found that non-profit California hospitals piled up $1.8 billion in taxpayer funded subsidies beyond what they return to communities in charity care the prior year.

Or the fact that 100 non-profit hospital executives collect compensation packages of over $1 million each, as the CNA report also disclosed.

While a few small independent hospitals remain, many of which are exempted by AB 503, California’s hospital scene today is dominated by giant corporate chains who account for the $5.8 billion in profits California hospitals record in 2012 alone.

With all that cash on hand, is it really too much to ask that they stop hiding what they count as charity care and community benefit, that all hospitals be held to the same standard, and that the public has a right to know how their tax dollars are being used?

The hospital industry lobbyists insist they are more than living up to their obligation. If that’s the case, increased public transparency and consistency in reporting should hardly be a cause for all the fuss.

–

Ed’s Note: Deborah Burger is a registered nurse and co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.

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We talk with RN Bonnie Castillo about National Nurses United new campaign, “Insist On A Registered Nurse”. Listen like this information could save your life or the life of a loved one.