Speaker 1: Welcome back to it could happen here. We now continue
Speaker 1: our conversation with the team from Shift Change Enjoy. Outside
Speaker 1: of the obvious, the union is doing landlordism for some reason,
Speaker 1: part which is just sort of I can't get over, like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you mean her forty four
Speaker 1: billion dollars? The thing you're doing is being a landlord.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it seems like they're you know,
Speaker 1: like out of one side of their mouth saying this
Speaker 1: is a democratic union. In their side of their mouth,
Speaker 1: they're doing political purges. They're like doing everything possible to
Speaker 1: make sure people don't know how the democratic process works,
Speaker 1: which I think is a pretty like basic precept of
Speaker 1: democracy is that if if if it's impossible to figure
Speaker 1: out how the system actually works, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: it's not actually a democracy in any real sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, yeah, And this is the thing you're saying,
Speaker 1: is like they see they seem to be acting like bosses,
Speaker 1: like they're firing people. They get nervous when people start organizing,
Speaker 1: which is not a thing that you would think a
Speaker 1: union would be ecstatic if it's like, oh hey there's
Speaker 1: this winter's like organized themselves I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a there's a there's a mentality inside
Speaker 1: among some people and even among some of the nurses
Speaker 1: that like, you know, when people are causing problems or
Speaker 1: you know, it's the Yeah, it's it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a very perplexing situation to be in, and many of
Speaker 1: us it's taken us years to really figure it out,
Speaker 1: because you don't we all come to work right to
Speaker 1: do our job, you know, I don't come to work
Speaker 1: to like figure out every like little nuanced thing about
Speaker 1: what's going on inside my union. I didn't become a
Speaker 1: union nurse because I wanted to be like a hero
Speaker 1: union member. I did it because it was down the
Speaker 1: street and it was a good job, and like I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a nurse more than anything in the world.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is but this is what we do,
Speaker 1: and this is why things like labor notes and learning
Speaker 1: how your union works is really important. We've been self
Speaker 1: educating ourselves. Like it's almost like you have to become
Speaker 1: a jail house lawyer, right, yeah, Like yeah, we've been
Speaker 1: sharing our favorite resources for like how do you learn
Speaker 1: about how union works or what your rights are and
Speaker 1: like we're basically taking notes for what we're going to
Speaker 1: have to do when we if we get in power
Speaker 1: inside the union to educate all the nurses in our union.
Speaker 1: One of the things a little too. I mean, every
Speaker 1: time I talk with people about this to try and
Speaker 1: give little tips and tricks. Don't leave your staff are
Speaker 1: a loan in a at the negotiating table. They'll tell
Speaker 1: you everything's going great, go get go, get some dinner,
Speaker 1: and you come back and you can't do regressive bargaining.
Speaker 1: You can't unbargain like a thing when someone's been empowered
Speaker 1: to decide something for you. And this is where especially
Speaker 1: new new units in in countries or parts of the
Speaker 1: country with strong union culture are finding that they'll step
Speaker 1: away from the bargaining table and they'll come back and
Speaker 1: all these decisions will be made that they don't have
Speaker 1: any you can't go back on it. It's like literally
Speaker 1: no basis in like in union negotiations. No, and so
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as regressive bargaining. If I offer,
Speaker 1: if I say that I want a you know, you
Speaker 1: offer a fifty percent increase in fifty cent an hour
Speaker 1: increase for floating to another union unit, I can't turn
Speaker 1: around and you can't offer me forty five cents the
Speaker 1: next go round. You cannot go back if you said
Speaker 1: fifty percent, it has to be you know, more than
Speaker 1: fifty percent on the next offer, or you just say
Speaker 1: that's my final offer. So you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: regressive bargaining is I have to tell you it's amazing,
Speaker 1: is that when we negotiate against Sutter in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: through twenty thirteen, we had multiple cases of ulps filed
Speaker 1: for regressive bargaining on their part. They constantly made these
Speaker 1: mistakes which we as nurses and the labor reps caught.
Speaker 1: And now for us, it's so important that we don't
Speaker 1: regressive bargain regressive bargaining on our own members here. We
Speaker 1: need to be moving forward. We should be making quantum
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds as nurses. Well, what we've gone through,
Speaker 1: we're supposedly the most trusted profession in the country. I
Speaker 1: think it's for the past twenty years. The only time
Speaker 1: we have not been the most progressive or the most
Speaker 1: respected profession was in two thousand and one. And you
Speaker 1: can obviously guess that it was firemen. It was firemen,
Speaker 1: But it's like twenty five years or so in a row,
Speaker 1: we've been the most trusted profession. It's because, you know,
Speaker 1: how can you not trust somebody who's cleaning you up
Speaker 1: when you soiled yourself in the bed, who's holding your
Speaker 1: hand when you're scared. That's why we're the most trusted profession,
Speaker 1: and we should be the most respected for what we do.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing that our union can't carry us through that.
Speaker 1: Our union was formed in a revolution that we overthrew
Speaker 1: and kicked out management nurses and formed the California Nurses Association,
Speaker 1: the bargaining part of the organization. The association broke away
Speaker 1: from the management part and we twirled her at all
Speaker 1: as a wonderful example somebody who was part of that revolution.
Speaker 1: And for about twenty over twenty some years, we were
Speaker 1: a rapidly progressive union. We didn't have all the rank
Speaker 1: and file things that we should have had in the union,
Speaker 1: but it was in the right direction for nurses. And
Speaker 1: we've kind of made in the past ten years this
Speaker 1: U turn and the Association, which I think is bad
Speaker 1: for nurses. We need to be going forward, and we
Speaker 1: have new nurses and new a new generation that is
Speaker 1: joining the union and they need to be a part
Speaker 1: of it. And they can't look at me and say
Speaker 1: that that old fogi that's you know, been in the
Speaker 1: union for thirty some years. You know that I'll be
Speaker 1: doing the work for them. They need to be active
Speaker 1: in that union and they need to love the idea
Speaker 1: of solidarity, you know, out of the fires of desperation,
Speaker 1: burn hope and solidarity. It was one of the ladies said,
Speaker 1: I think sharing Borough from Australia, an Australian labor activists,
Speaker 1: said that we need to have every union member. I
Speaker 1: don't think every one of them has to be rabbit
Speaker 1: about it, but they should be aware that they need
Speaker 1: to stand tall and support each other, and not just
Speaker 1: even they need to support the non union nurses they
Speaker 1: need to get. We need to get more nurses unionized.
Speaker 1: The problem with unions is there's not enough unions out there.
Speaker 1: There's not enough people in the unions. We need to
Speaker 1: get more nurses unionized and our union hasn't been able
Speaker 1: to do that in quite a while. We haven't We've
Speaker 1: been raiding a lot of other unions, but we need
Speaker 1: to get out there and get people in the South unionized.
Speaker 1: We need to get other nurses and you know in
Speaker 1: the Midwest organized that aren't unionized yet, we have a
Speaker 1: bigger vision as bedside nurses, and I think that our
Speaker 1: our national union has I'm only as strong as the
Speaker 1: person next to me. I need support. As John said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're four people running for the Council of Presidents, but
Speaker 1: behind us, there's there's so many nurses supporting us. Nurses
Speaker 1: are texting me all the time, Hey, give me some pliers,
Speaker 1: give me some buttons. I want to pass them out.
Speaker 1: It's it's important for us. I know we're we're at
Speaker 1: a disadvantage we don't have. You know, the people were
Speaker 1: running against even though it's illegal for them to have
Speaker 1: the union promote them, they're obviously going to have that
Speaker 1: advantage like a city president, because they're going to be
Speaker 1: in the National Nurse magazine, going around the country, you know,
Speaker 1: doing the things they do as sitting presidents, so they're
Speaker 1: going to get that free publicity. I wish our union
Speaker 1: presidents went around the country because as far as I know,
Speaker 1: they've never come here at Chicago. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: only time we beg to Chicago's when we had that
Speaker 1: People Power convention there and that was my first visit
Speaker 1: back to Chicago, and I think ten years was when
Speaker 1: I went there. And it's amazing. Is it should be
Speaker 1: our union should rotate, rotate where they have their their
Speaker 1: their conventions. They should we should be all around the country.
Speaker 1: We should be going to the south and having conventions
Speaker 1: so that we can attract people. Um. I think it's important.
Speaker 1: We need to make inroads. You know, I know a
Speaker 1: lot of it is they're going to say the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and I think the pandemic did hasten this siloing, and
Speaker 1: you know, some of it was a little understandable. But
Speaker 1: even when it is evident that they should have come
Speaker 1: out of the borough, they never did. The people have
Speaker 1: been saying how tired they are from the pandemic, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how they could have been tired, but
Speaker 1: the union could have been tired when they were just
Speaker 1: having zoom calls. No, No, the nurses are saying that
Speaker 1: they're tired. Like But here's what's interesting. This is a
Speaker 1: thing that I'm seeing in real time as we're doing
Speaker 1: this work, is that nurses who have been exhausted and
Speaker 1: some of the most beat down, like like nurses who
Speaker 1: are like in the worst situations here in Chicago, are tired.
Speaker 1: But then they hear something interesting is going on with
Speaker 1: the union that is actually something that they have a
Speaker 1: say in, which is very unusual in our union, and
Speaker 1: people get very excited. So I'm having coworkers coming up
Speaker 1: to me who are the least interested in union business
Speaker 1: until maybe it's time for a strike. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because like when we did our strike organizing
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the first strike in Chicago's of nurses in
Speaker 1: like forty years in Chicago. You know, they kept it
Speaker 1: would call these small kind of symbolic actions, and they
Speaker 1: call them stress tests or structure tests for like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to do We're going to do a press
Speaker 1: conference and you have like, you know, a handful of
Speaker 1: nurses come out for the press conference. He like ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen nurses would come out and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're all wringing their hands. And then we start started
Speaker 1: calling pickets and then we start blowing past our turnout numbers.
Speaker 1: And then when we did our strike, they were expecting
Speaker 1: eight hundred nurses with twelve fourteen hundred nurses, more nurses
Speaker 1: than ever been in anyone place in our hospital like
Speaker 1: it was like a giant party. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like when people have know that there's something that really
Speaker 1: has like they has a stake in, right, there's an
Speaker 1: infinite amount of energy almost and this election is really
Speaker 1: kind of like we can't make the buttons fast enough
Speaker 1: to give away, like they keep people keep coming up
Speaker 1: and they're like, here, give me a handful. I've got
Speaker 1: coworkers and we're doing there's you know, let's get the
Speaker 1: pictures of everyone with their nurse with their with their
Speaker 1: shift change buttons vote shift change, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: turning that stuff into we're getting ramped up and prepared
Speaker 1: for like our social media like outreach, and this is
Speaker 1: part of it, is like getting people to see like, hey,
Speaker 1: there are people out there who want to do something
Speaker 1: different and that put you, like as a as a
Speaker 1: bedside nurse, this is our opportunity to get you into
Speaker 1: the driver's seat of how your union is run, how
Speaker 1: strikes are called, how we negotiate, Like we want to
Speaker 1: have a council of hospitals in contract campaigns, it's just
Speaker 1: nurses from negotiating teams so that they can all so
Speaker 1: we can coordinate and decide when we want to go
Speaker 1: on strike, and it's not someone who's never been a
Speaker 1: nurse making that call for us, Yeah, which seems just
Speaker 1: baffling that you'd have some random person who hasn't been
Speaker 1: a nurse making strike decisions to that, I mean, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's not also just there seems like there's
Speaker 1: such an enormous gap between the things you would just
Speaker 1: basically fundamentally expect a union to be doing and what's
Speaker 1: actually happening, which has nothing to do with that, And
Speaker 1: it's just the sort of I mean it almost it
Speaker 1: seems like like intentional dubobilization. Well, they want to treat
Speaker 1: us like a spigot, like like you can turn us
Speaker 1: on and turn us off. You know. The problem is
Speaker 1: is that people don't respond to that well, and you
Speaker 1: kind of constantly have to be honing your practice through
Speaker 1: defending the contract, which is a big thing that like
Speaker 1: a lot of my coworkers are just constantly annoyed at
Speaker 1: that the contract we're not defending. Our chief nurse rep
Speaker 1: is always annoyed that she can only scrape together you know,
Speaker 1: four or five people, and you know I do it
Speaker 1: and I'm not like I'm really good when I'm in
Speaker 1: the room with You know, I my coworkers think that
Speaker 1: I do a good job, but you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes time to like doing all of the reading and
Speaker 1: everything to make sure it's done, I need. You know,
Speaker 1: It's the thing that I'm always working on and trying
Speaker 1: to get better at. But you know, the that is
Speaker 1: kind of the lifeblood of trade unionism is like, if
Speaker 1: you're going to have a contract, you need to in
Speaker 1: between contract barting campaigns where you can go on strike,
Speaker 1: you need to be constantly probing and pushing and finding
Speaker 1: where the weak spots are and keeping people in the
Speaker 1: practice of like fighting. And if you do that and
Speaker 1: you're really effective at it, you can affect some pretty
Speaker 1: impressive changes in between contracts. When our friends was was
Speaker 1: the labor rep at Cooke County, they went from having
Speaker 1: maybe like ten people doing like the rep work to
Speaker 1: over sixty people doing the rep work. She partnered with
Speaker 1: a really phenomenal chief nurse Rep who had a family
Speaker 1: Her dad had been president of a SEIU local, and
Speaker 1: they were they had pushed so hard that they were
Speaker 1: able to to open negotiations for attention bonuses, which after
Speaker 1: you've settled a contract is like to open something on economics,
Speaker 1: like on the order of fifteen, fifteen or ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars retention bonuses is a huge deal. Yea. The problem
Speaker 1: was is that that then they fired her when she
Speaker 1: connected us at Cooke County or the nurses at Cook
Speaker 1: County with nurses at University of Chicago and we started
Speaker 1: comparing no with what our staff were like, and their
Speaker 1: chief nurse reps started asking the director of bargaining, who's
Speaker 1: not a nurse and has never been a nurse, to say,
Speaker 1: why is it that we are bringing in Why is
Speaker 1: my facility bringing in four million dollars worth of dues?
Speaker 1: And we get like, you know, two hundred twenty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth maybe of staff, Like what's the deal? And
Speaker 1: why is it that we don't spend any money on
Speaker 1: arbitration or any of the stuff. They're constantly afraid of
Speaker 1: doing anything. And that's when they fired Natalie and then
Speaker 1: and now they're down to they're trying to whittle those
Speaker 1: those nurses retention bonus negotiations down to like three thousand
Speaker 1: and four thousand bucks from like fifteen thousands. You know,
Speaker 1: you bring in the right people, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: management has to like hire in like an entire legal
Speaker 1: extra legal department at coocounting Health Services. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not that somebody is not a nurse. That doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: That was not a nurse, yet she was an outstanding
Speaker 1: example what a labor rep should be. An organizer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she you stand with the workers. I just
Speaker 1: I do believe that we need more nurses involved in
Speaker 1: in organizing and inside the union. But I have no
Speaker 1: issues with you know, when you have labor reps like Natalie,
Speaker 1: that's that's what you need to keep the union thriving.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, to cut her down when she was making
Speaker 1: inroads to really empower nurses and the union was it's
Speaker 1: just beyond the pale to make that decision. Why they
Speaker 1: made that decision is something that I think if we
Speaker 1: won the presidency, we'd want to find out why was
Speaker 1: that decision made because a big part of this is
Speaker 1: holding the staff accountable is our big thing. Like we
Speaker 1: just need to know at right now there's no accountability
Speaker 1: to so imagine having a job where like if you
Speaker 1: are a nurse, Like if we're speaking to our coworkers
Speaker 1: right now, imagine being a nurse and no one ever
Speaker 1: checking your charting. No one ever checking what a patient
Speaker 1: has to say about the care they got. No one
Speaker 1: asking a doctor like what you did during a shift right, um?
Speaker 1: No one checking you're like to see if like all
Speaker 1: of your vital signs are actually really reflected in like
Speaker 1: the monitor. That's the situation that we're dealing with staff
Speaker 1: right now. No one who's outside of their staff bosses
Speaker 1: at the director level has they're they're only accountable to
Speaker 1: those people, and they are only accountable and they're not
Speaker 1: actually accountable. They just write like they write everything themselves.
Speaker 1: They write their own reports. They get they you know,
Speaker 1: they'll take you know, a nurse will come up with
Speaker 1: a good idea, they'll run it up the flag pole.
Speaker 1: Check out this awesome idea have, boss. I mean, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a downer I guess is like it all
Speaker 1: sounds very like this is all grim and like depressing.
Speaker 1: But the fact is is that we are at a
Speaker 1: point now where we see what's going on and what
Speaker 1: we need to do. We've been educating ourselves about what
Speaker 1: can be done to change the union because the union
Speaker 1: is a democratic structure, even in like just the shell
Speaker 1: form of it, and as nurses We've got a lot
Speaker 1: of faith that as nurses, we can figure this out
Speaker 1: and come up with a much better, more democratic way
Speaker 1: to run our union, and I think it will fundamentally
Speaker 1: be a much stronger organization. I think that's the fear
Speaker 1: is that somehow we like, you know, some people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna make it worse. It's like, I don't
Speaker 1: know that you can make it worse if, like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's the healthcare industry is changing. I think we're seeing
Speaker 1: this in real time as a healthcare industry is changing,
Speaker 1: and we are seeing to the you know, you have
Speaker 1: hospitals that come up with the most cutting edged version
Speaker 1: of healthcare, like the Universe Chicago, or the university systems
Speaker 1: out in California, or maybe like Stanford that's like the
Speaker 1: very like the top end of like what healthcare is,
Speaker 1: and those hospitals are like basically they might as well
Speaker 1: be gold mines. And then you've got the safety net hospitals.
Speaker 1: And my fear is that the safety net hospitals they
Speaker 1: would like to casualize to uber. They keep telling us about, oh,
Speaker 1: they're going to uberize nursing. Well, you know, what is
Speaker 1: it that they're doing to stop you know, over half
Speaker 1: of the nurses being at Cook County Health Service from
Speaker 1: being replaced with agency nurses right now, Like how long
Speaker 1: is that going to go? Until there's like you know,
Speaker 1: they go from a bargaining unit of you know, over
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred nurses in the union or seventeen hundred nurses
Speaker 1: in the union to like, you know, it could theoretically
Speaker 1: drop down to you know, a handful of Union nurses.
Speaker 1: And so they like they it's like an unofficial layoff, right,
Speaker 1: people quit and they institute a hiring freeze and then
Speaker 1: they don't replace them. They bring them in as agency
Speaker 1: nurses because they would rather in these safety net institutions
Speaker 1: not pay benefits, not pay pensions. You know, our hospital
Speaker 1: we lost, they took our pension away, and the union
Speaker 1: didn't do anything to fight that back. I was in
Speaker 1: the pension plan for like two years and then they're like,
Speaker 1: guess what, no more pensions and the union to do
Speaker 1: shit about it, and they could have done something. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like it's because the contract language is like, well,
Speaker 1: you get whatever we offer you. And our teamsters at
Speaker 1: our facility took like a very like a hundred two
Speaker 1: to four hundred dollars buyout to get rid of their pensions,
Speaker 1: and that was the end of our pensions for the
Speaker 1: entire medical center. And then our union where our staffers
Speaker 1: are all bought into the steelworkers pension, right they have
Speaker 1: a pension. They're like, well, John, maybe you'd have to
Speaker 1: strike six or eight times, which is what they say
Speaker 1: whenever they don't want to do anything. And they certainly
Speaker 1: aren't telling us about hospitals, like the folks that all
Speaker 1: debates who have struck like ten times to get what
Speaker 1: it takes. And it's just like, you know, striking. I
Speaker 1: think there's this idea that it's scary. I have co
Speaker 1: workers who are telling me, John, just tell me when
Speaker 1: the next strike is. I can't wait for the next strike.
Speaker 1: But we've been through it. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: coworkers who haven't. Half of our nurses are new, they've
Speaker 1: never been through a strike. But you know, you build
Speaker 1: a union through strikes, which is the thing that is
Speaker 1: a little counterintuitive, especially if you do it the right
Speaker 1: way and you're strategic about it. Raina, You've been real quiet,
Speaker 1: like what do you think about all this? That's really
Speaker 1: the number one I'm a lady and I don't interject
Speaker 1: unless I absolutely have to. So to go back earlier,
Speaker 1: what was said about how unique are Slate is well
Speaker 1: is unique in itself. For one, of course, I kind
Speaker 1: of sit with being a female and minority. But you
Speaker 1: also got to think about the men. Now, there is
Speaker 1: not a lot of men in nursing in general, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what also they need to look at,
Speaker 1: because I heard the criticism about that. But let's flip
Speaker 1: the script on this. I mean we individually, as Eric
Speaker 1: and John did say before that we were not here
Speaker 1: to be a counsel of presidents on the every was
Speaker 1: actually jumping on it to help other people. But from
Speaker 1: you know, I myself and Eric, we've been knowing each
Speaker 1: other for what seven six seven years? Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and you know, I have seen the changes
Speaker 1: with the union. I feel that the union has been
Speaker 1: really stagnant. I think our dudes should be used for community.
Speaker 1: And now during the pandemic, there is a lot of
Speaker 1: nurses are totally burnt out and they're slowing to realize
Speaker 1: that nursing is not what I thought. I did not
Speaker 1: signed for for this pandemic. I never I've been a
Speaker 1: nurse for thirteen years. I never knew that was never
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be a pandemic like this.
Speaker 1: So it changed your whole spectrum of what nursing stands
Speaker 1: and also what we should do to preserve it. Now,
Speaker 1: I you know, I look young, but I am a
Speaker 1: grandma about to be a four and so one of
Speaker 1: them are going to be a nurse one day. And
Speaker 1: actually one of them is a ten year old. And
Speaker 1: he told me, he said, you know, looking at all
Speaker 1: my nursing books and looking at you know, all my
Speaker 1: medical stuff, and he's looking at me, he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I may want to be a nurse now.
Speaker 1: Mind you, two years ago he wanted to be a
Speaker 1: race car driver. So it happened. So it kind of
Speaker 1: inspired me a little bit, like I need to do
Speaker 1: more leadership. I mean, I think I'm a natural leader
Speaker 1: in itself. It's just how to do it, where to
Speaker 1: go And this is just a step for me. I'm
Speaker 1: at that age. You know, I need to look behind
Speaker 1: you of all the younger nurses my family and what
Speaker 1: my young grandchildren, what they may be. And I want
Speaker 1: to preserve that. And that's a third reason why I'm
Speaker 1: standing to do this. So and my peers. I mean,
Speaker 1: you work, any nurse work eight to twelve hours. The
Speaker 1: facility that you work with is almost a second home
Speaker 1: to you. So you want to stand up with your peers.
Speaker 1: You know, there shouldn't be no divide. We're all standing
Speaker 1: for an employer who has been trying to take benefits away,
Speaker 1: trying to take you know, anything that makes it decent
Speaker 1: for you to just work and also is wearing tearing
Speaker 1: on your wellness and your work life balance, and it's
Speaker 1: your whole mental state. So it's so important to really
Speaker 1: know about your union, about the breakdown of it, about
Speaker 1: the history, about everything. You need to keep your employer
Speaker 1: accountable and also within the union. Just like nurses have
Speaker 1: to be accountable for everything we do, and if we
Speaker 1: get in trouble, of course we're going to be reprimanded.
Speaker 1: The union needs to also go through the same thing
Speaker 1: as we do. It's only fair. So that's pretty much
Speaker 1: it for me. Any other questions you're reading, are you
Speaker 1: have you finished up your copy of Solidary Unionism yet? Arena? Oh?
Speaker 1: You mean the rank and file I am on chapter
Speaker 1: three has been on. It's been interesting and since I
Speaker 1: will be going on vacation, well, I am on vacation
Speaker 1: right now. I'll be leaving tomorrow. I should be finished
Speaker 1: up with that book by then. That's one thing that like,
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to think just because I can
Speaker 1: speak out the union in a half way intelligible way,
Speaker 1: that I've been studying this for a long time. A
Speaker 1: lot of my knowledge about the union is pretty new
Speaker 1: and recent and uh, like I got, you know, I
Speaker 1: picked up a copy of Stoughton Lens the Rank and
Speaker 1: File Labor Law for the rank and Filer. There's an
Speaker 1: audiobook of it. It's just a great, like short little
Speaker 1: book about everything you need to know to kind of
Speaker 1: like exercise your rights and try and stay out of
Speaker 1: like trouble. I picked up a copy of you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Jaye Mccaflery's no Shortcuts. We've been passing around a copy
Speaker 1: of Stoughton Lens Solidary Unionism and like there's a lot.
Speaker 1: And then we went to Labor Notes, and like it's
Speaker 1: funny because our union sent us to Labor Notes. Like
Speaker 1: I've got pictures of me and like other shift change
Speaker 1: people that were taken by staff if we were at
Speaker 1: the Labor Notes conference. The funny thing is that I
Speaker 1: was in the talks about how to build a caucus
Speaker 1: and how to exercise our democratic rights as one of
Speaker 1: the funeral the only nurses in some of those spaces.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know what they expected to happen,
Speaker 1: but the way they're treating this whole thing, every little
Speaker 1: thing that we've gotten, the fact that we can send
Speaker 1: that we were about to be able to send emails
Speaker 1: out was the thing that we had to fight for
Speaker 1: every step of the way. They gave us a set
Speaker 1: of rules that the rules are the most conservative interpretation
Speaker 1: of our legal democratic rights that are set in federal law.
Speaker 1: They gave us like the nineteen fifties, like carpenters union
Speaker 1: interpretation of like those those rights. They ignored all the
Speaker 1: case law that we have to be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with our coworkers to normal union channel, like every communication
Speaker 1: method our union uses to normally communicate with us legally
Speaker 1: we should have access to. Now they're trying to throttle
Speaker 1: that's like all you can only send an email communication
Speaker 1: every fifteen days. It's like you know what, like you're
Speaker 1: doing your little whisper campaign like twenty four hours, twenty
Speaker 1: four seven just by and then you have to opt into,
Speaker 1: like to communication about the about the election, like they
Speaker 1: were trying to keep and they're cutting meetings short, they're
Speaker 1: cutting meetings off. They were trying to bury this. Now
Speaker 1: we think that they're they're trying to shift gears because
Speaker 1: they know that this is a lot more serious than
Speaker 1: they thought it was. You know, we're not here to
Speaker 1: you know, turn the union upside like well, maybe turn
Speaker 1: the union upside down is a good way to think
Speaker 1: of it, but in a good productive way, not in
Speaker 1: a you know, turn it upside down and shake it,
Speaker 1: you know, to like you know, destroy it. We want
Speaker 1: to turn it upside down so that it's the way
Speaker 1: a real union is supposed to be, is it. People
Speaker 1: who are elected into leadership are accountable to the people
Speaker 1: who elect them and um, And our goal is to
Speaker 1: you know, to make the union like we want to
Speaker 1: go from something like you know, Chicago Teachers Union, which
Speaker 1: is really power full and famously like democratic. It wasn't
Speaker 1: always that way. It was only focused on very basic stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, before the women in the Chicago Teachers Union
Speaker 1: took it over and changed it for the better. M
Speaker 1: you know, that's our goal as we want our union
Speaker 1: to be to have that internal, vibrant discussion and debate
Speaker 1: about how the union should be, work should work, because
Speaker 1: we know that as nurses that we've got the skills
Speaker 1: in the capacity to have an impact on that. Others
Speaker 1: are said, we don't think that people who are paid
Speaker 1: out of our due should ever be afraid when a
Speaker 1: nurse opens their mouth and says, I think things could
Speaker 1: be better or I don't like how this is happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think one more thing I do
Speaker 1: you kind of want to add is that you know,
Speaker 1: you were talking a bit earlier about sort of the
Speaker 1: risk of stagnation, and I mean, I think something that
Speaker 1: people don't want to hear, is it, like you know,
Speaker 1: there there. It's been a wave of militancy in the
Speaker 1: last few years, but the actual union like the actual
Speaker 1: unionization rate of the US keeps going down. And I
Speaker 1: think a big part of that is, you know, like
Speaker 1: even even in the periods when unions are really strong,
Speaker 1: they got into these sort of bureaucratic patterns where people
Speaker 1: were busy sort of fighting their own internal like like
Speaker 1: busy fighting their own rank and file, and then when
Speaker 1: the bosses came for them, they got destroyed. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, like it really seems like a moment where
Speaker 1: either unions are going to people like you are going
Speaker 1: to win and you get these rank and file movements
Speaker 1: that are changing what the union is to people it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be, or the last remnants of unionism is
Speaker 1: going to die. And that's I don't know, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's depressing, but that's like if you if you just
Speaker 1: look at the unionization rate chart, it just keeps going
Speaker 1: down and down and down, and every time it seems
Speaker 1: like it's hit to do low, it's like it finds
Speaker 1: another way to go out, which I guess is kind
Speaker 1: of a grim way to look at it, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it is very positive to think
Speaker 1: about how how there's organizing that's difficult. It's hard to
Speaker 1: get people to do some things right. It's difficult to
Speaker 1: pull people together for you know, certain types of organizing
Speaker 1: when they don't feel like they have a say or
Speaker 1: a stake in what's going on. But I will say
Speaker 1: that like it has been, it is always eye opening
Speaker 1: when I watch my coworkers pull together in this thing,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's that common experience at work
Speaker 1: and especially care workers right now it is like, um
Speaker 1: that is driving us to do different things. There's a
Speaker 1: reason why we're having a rank and file movement in
Speaker 1: our union now and things aren't just continue like continuing
Speaker 1: to stagnate. I think that people recognize that their union
Speaker 1: has to be fighting for them. I think that's a
Speaker 1: big thing. People want the union to fight, not to
Speaker 1: just kind of like sit there and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: people get really frustrated when they feel like they're dues
Speaker 1: are being taken and they're not seeing that immediate benefit.
Speaker 1: The immediate benefit only comes when we pull together and
Speaker 1: we fight back. So I think that I totally see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. I think a lot of that comes
Speaker 1: down to people who get into these positions. And this
Speaker 1: is why we believe in the principle of like rotation
Speaker 1: and like and churning over the leadership as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Is that I think when you stay and no one
Speaker 1: should be in the position of organize yourself out of
Speaker 1: a job. Right if you're doing you're if you're being effective,
Speaker 1: you're organizing yourself out of a job. And I have
Speaker 1: organized out of myself out of some jobs, and right
Speaker 1: now I've organized myself out of telling people that there's
Speaker 1: a movement and that we've got to participate in it.
Speaker 1: And now I'm moving on to other things because I
Speaker 1: have like a whole crew of people in my hospital
Speaker 1: who are doing that organizing work without me having to
Speaker 1: do it. So I think that there's like it's can
Speaker 1: be lile depressing when you look at like the raw numbers,
Speaker 1: but I think that a lot of that is Like
Speaker 1: it's like if you if your union is clearly not
Speaker 1: great and people kind of complain about it, then yeah,
Speaker 1: no one's going to want to join it. Like if
Speaker 1: your union thinks it's more important to be a landlord
Speaker 1: or you know, stash forty two million dollars in the bank,
Speaker 1: then it is to invest that money in actually building
Speaker 1: organizational expertise or you know, building organizing the unorganized, like
Speaker 1: Eric was saying, in places that are like right to
Speaker 1: work states, which we've won, we have won contracts in
Speaker 1: right right to work states, but you have to be looking.
Speaker 1: You have to be constantly pushing for it. And if
Speaker 1: you can't just take a little win here there and
Speaker 1: then be excited because you just got another union to
Speaker 1: affiliate you, like our union does, Like we need to
Speaker 1: be working on actually bringing more and more workers into
Speaker 1: our union and if we don't do that, it will die.
Speaker 1: But um, I think that there's a spirit in the
Speaker 1: you know that. You know, when you come to a
Speaker 1: place to work with co workers and you face common
Speaker 1: enemy and common problems, common conditions, you do see what
Speaker 1: it can look like when people decide to do something
Speaker 1: on their own. You know. To get back to MIA's
Speaker 1: point about declining unionism in this country. In order to
Speaker 1: you know, to change this decline in unionism, we need
Speaker 1: to change who we are as union members. We need
Speaker 1: to You know that I'm not a big doctor Phil fan,
Speaker 1: but he used to say that thing all the time.
Speaker 1: Well how's that working for you? Unions need to take
Speaker 1: a look at themselves and say how how how is
Speaker 1: this working for you? We were declining? Why do we
Speaker 1: continue to do the same thing we're doing over and
Speaker 1: over again. We need to change who we are. For example,
Speaker 1: as a nurse, a nurse needs to know when they
Speaker 1: stand up and speak out that when they stand up
Speaker 1: they won't be standing alone, that there'll be somebody around them,
Speaker 1: that other nurses are going to be there right behind them,
Speaker 1: backing them up. And that goes for any trade. You know,
Speaker 1: we can't progress as workers without struggle, and there will
Speaker 1: be struggle. We need to march forward. We need to
Speaker 1: be able to say everybody that can be any union
Speaker 1: should be any union, and we need to expand ourselves
Speaker 1: as nurses. I mean, I don't want to harp on it,
Speaker 1: but this pandemic was devastating for us. And obviously no
Speaker 1: nurses worked remotely. I should say no bedside nurse worked remotely.
Speaker 1: I know many of our nurse managers worked remotely and
Speaker 1: checked in on us through you know, online things, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, every nurse, bedside nurse was at
Speaker 1: that bedside. It was not it was not pleasant, it
Speaker 1: was it was something that I'm sure many nurses are
Speaker 1: probably in uh you know, counseling for they were that
Speaker 1: traumatized by it. They had many people had lost family members,
Speaker 1: just like the rest of the public did, yet they
Speaker 1: still had to continue to work. Um. I think as
Speaker 1: a as a union, we need to change who we are.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I don't want to point fingers
Speaker 1: or anything that you know, people that are in the
Speaker 1: union now or the people were running against I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're good people, but we have a different idea, and
Speaker 1: we want to bring a change to how the union runs.
Speaker 1: And I think that change will make us a stronger
Speaker 1: and better union, and I think will be will have
Speaker 1: happier nurses and wind up with more activist nurses who
Speaker 1: will expand the unions. It's going to be a word
Speaker 1: of mouth. You know, one thing. You can have the
Speaker 1: best organization in the world, but the things that are
Speaker 1: the best product, but what really makes your product worthwhile
Speaker 1: is word of mouth campaigns. People have to talk about you.
Speaker 1: People have to say, hey, you know that California Nurses
Speaker 1: Association that, and then you they're really doing something. I
Speaker 1: want to be a part of that. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to you know, we've been pressing on a
Speaker 1: Medicare for all, single payer and and of course ratios
Speaker 1: for everybody, but we need to start organizing more and
Speaker 1: all those states where those workers suffer. Because I can
Speaker 1: tell you this right now, you know, I'd ever talked
Speaker 1: about it with John. Our hospital is filled with nurses
Speaker 1: from the South and they tell you, oh, I came
Speaker 1: to California for the ratios. They need to fight for
Speaker 1: those ratios back in Alabama and Mississippi and all the
Speaker 1: states they come from We need to help them, you know,
Speaker 1: bring unions to the South. You know, the basic core
Speaker 1: of right of right to work, it was racism. The
Speaker 1: racism is what drove right to work. It was the
Speaker 1: same people that brought you segregation is what brought you
Speaker 1: right to work. And you know that's a fact. Oh
Speaker 1: and it's important for us that you know, we want
Speaker 1: to be an activist union and I'm not opposed to that,
Speaker 1: but we can do that by unionizing these hospitals and
Speaker 1: making those nurses bedside lives a lot better. Um. You
Speaker 1: know Stoughton Lynn. It's funny is that I always laugh,
Speaker 1: you know, John brings it up. I'm from originally from Canton, Ohio.
Speaker 1: And of course Stoughton Lynn taught I believe it was
Speaker 1: at Youngstown State. He was from. He was He spent
Speaker 1: the last part of his life after his Vietnam War
Speaker 1: activism in Youngstown, in the Youngstown area. And I think
Speaker 1: the last book I read by him was Bob Lee's
Speaker 1: and Zapatistas. You know, he was talking about the It's
Speaker 1: a great book. Um. And not many people know about him.
Speaker 1: I knew about him in Ohio because you know, you know,
Speaker 1: social justice work there. Uh, you know at Walsh at
Speaker 1: that time it was Walsh College and then Walsh University. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: you know Joe Turma, the professor there, you know, was
Speaker 1: often talk about Stoughton Lynn and that's how I, you know,
Speaker 1: started reading a lot of his works. The things that
Speaker 1: he says about rank and file workers is something that
Speaker 1: we need to make part of the national conversation. And
Speaker 1: we need to get that message out. We need to
Speaker 1: tone down the big union actions and the big union
Speaker 1: talk and let's just make it a nurse's conversation. We
Speaker 1: always talked about our union about nurses values. Nurses valuables.
Speaker 1: Values are invaluable. They apply to every walk of life,
Speaker 1: every trade. And I think that's what we need to do.
Speaker 1: And I know that's what Mark would say if he
Speaker 1: was on the call with us. I just got a
Speaker 1: text from him. He's almost finished with our video, so
Speaker 1: he's working hard. I mean, the guy took two weeks
Speaker 1: of his own time. And that's another thing. Here we are,
Speaker 1: we are bedside nurses. He had to self teach himself
Speaker 1: how to make pretty high end quality videos. And we're
Speaker 1: not bought and sold. We don't hire anybody to do
Speaker 1: our work for us. We're doing this ourselves. We're bootstrapping it,
Speaker 1: as you know what they call bootstrapping it yourself up here.
Speaker 1: We are bootstrapping a campaign and a movement. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we're going to win. We are at least
Speaker 1: going to make a hell of an impression on people,
Speaker 1: and I hope whether we win or lose, that impression
Speaker 1: goes far and that people listen to what we're saying
Speaker 1: and demand what we're standing for. What we want our
Speaker 1: union to be. We don't want to have an sciu
Speaker 1: like union. We don't want to like we're paying for
Speaker 1: services here. We want a union that listens to us
Speaker 1: and does what we want. A nurse shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: beg a labor rep to say no. We said no
Speaker 1: to a last, best and final and our labor rep
Speaker 1: said no. This in our professional opinion, this is a
Speaker 1: good deal. Well guess guess what, Mia, We got ten
Speaker 1: percent more by saying no. And I know that that
Speaker 1: sounds greedy, but in reality, um, you know, we do
Speaker 1: get paid considerably more in California than in other place
Speaker 1: in the country. But also, to buy a house in
Speaker 1: a bad neighborhood is a million and a half dollars correct.
Speaker 1: So it's so it's I have to drive an hour
Speaker 1: away just to get to work. It is cheaper where
Speaker 1: I live right now than it is in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: I could not get a house in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: at all. And we should be incorporating housing demands into
Speaker 1: our negotiations as well, like especially years gonna be a landlord,
Speaker 1: Like come on, well, okay, how about we you know,
Speaker 1: the first public housing was really cooperative housing built by unions.
Speaker 1: Like there's no reason why. Um, you know these some
Speaker 1: of these institutions are like incredibly wealthy and building. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if we can we have the kind of
Speaker 1: power to bring them to you know, a screeching halt.
Speaker 1: We should be able to, like, you know, get the
Speaker 1: kind of things that we need to live by in
Speaker 1: our community, like we should be living where our patients
Speaker 1: are anyway. And it's you know, and it's a way
Speaker 1: of bringing our bringing us ourselves into our community so
Speaker 1: that our community is you know that we're part of
Speaker 1: our community. Um. And you know, I think where I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say, I'm going to be waking up in
Speaker 1: six hours so that I can go back to work.
Speaker 1: And we want to make sure that people know a
Speaker 1: couple of key things. So there is an election happening.
Speaker 1: If you are a nurse in a NA California Nurses
Speaker 1: Association or National Nurses United and NOC like hospital, there's
Speaker 1: an election happening. Ballots are being mailed out to you
Speaker 1: on on channel tenth. We expect that they're going to
Speaker 1: start arriving a day or two after that. We are
Speaker 1: the shift Change slate, so the four of us are
Speaker 1: running for the Council of Presidents. It's Eric, Raina, John
Speaker 1: and Mark And if you want to find us on
Speaker 1: social media, we just got our Instagram account. We are
Speaker 1: called Shift Change and on You. We're on TikTok Now
Speaker 1: we're going to be releasing some videos shift Change and
Speaker 1: on You, and then we're also going to have we've
Speaker 1: got our YouTube and Facebook set up as well. Look
Speaker 1: for us there. And we've got to go fund maybe
Speaker 1: because we've got to buy the materials that we are
Speaker 1: using to help organize with. Thankfully, by the sounds of it,
Speaker 1: our lawyers are going to be working for us for
Speaker 1: because they believe in what we're doing. And these are
Speaker 1: movement lawyers. These are not right wing people who want
Speaker 1: to fight unions. They want unions to be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: accountable to the workers and to be strong fighting unions.
Speaker 1: And that's our main goal is we think that our
Speaker 1: union could be one of the most powerful unions in
Speaker 1: the country if we organize and fight, and we organize
Speaker 1: by building our relationships on trust and solidarity, by constantly
Speaker 1: working to defend our contract. And we think that as
Speaker 1: we build that energy, we can take that to all
Speaker 1: the other things that we think are portness nurses. So
Speaker 1: we talk about nurses values. We know those are actually
Speaker 1: nurses values and not some person who decided that they're
Speaker 1: going to tag along with us and ride on our
Speaker 1: coattails to you know, whatever political future that they think
Speaker 1: they have. You know, we are you know, this is
Speaker 1: our union and we're going to make it you know,
Speaker 1: accountable to us so that we can change the world
Speaker 1: and change our workplace and make you know, being a
Speaker 1: nurse one of those kind of jobs that people aspire
Speaker 1: to and not something that they come into for two
Speaker 1: or three years and then leave because it's so terrible.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what else to say. I'm ready
Speaker 1: for shift change, rainy. You're ready for shift change, yep.
Speaker 1: And just like Nelson Mandela saying I never lose. I
Speaker 1: either win or I learned. Hell yes, hell yeah. I
Speaker 1: love this. This is the stuff I look for. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Thank you, Mia, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: all for being on. This is great and I really
Speaker 1: hope you'll win and if we win, bring us back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, yeah, give us a report back.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you, we'll tell you everything that happened, and
Speaker 1: maybe if we win, we'll have a nice victory party
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll let you come out, you and the
Speaker 1: rest of the It could Happen Here crew, Maybe do
Speaker 1: some live stuff for us, because I think be a
Speaker 1: kick out of that. Every time I hear a nurse
Speaker 1: say that I listened to it could happen here a
Speaker 1: part of me just like does a little Snoopy happy dance.
Speaker 1: It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com. Slash Sources thanks for listening,