National Nurses United

for COVID-19. This means that if nurses become infected with COVID-19, the injury or illness is presumed to be job related and makes them automatically eligible for workers' compensation benefits. Before they won presumptive eligibility, Altafer said the hospital assumed it was "community acquired" unless you could show it was a direct relationship to a positive patient. Another result of the flurry of actions and demands is that dozens of new nurse leaders are stepping up to help at various Sutter facilities. "Newer nurses come to our Zoom membership meetings," Altafer noted. "They are more involved." Cook County Health and Hospitals System in april on the south side of Chicago, home to many of the city's African-American residents, a surge of COVID-19 cases was underway. By mid-April, it was home to the largest cluster of cases in Chicago, the seat of Cook County. NNOC represents nurses who work in six Cook County facilities. When nurses at Provident Hospital of Cook County learned on Friday, April 3 that their employer was going to temporarily shut down the emergency room for renovations, they knew it would endanger the health and safety of the patient community in Chicago's South Side. The nurses leaped into action, meeting with management two days later to stop the closure, slated to last from April 6 to May 6. When the county refused to delay the closing and consult with nurses and the community, RNs held a press conference the next day, mobilizing nurses, community members, patients, union allies, and the teachers union to protest the month-long closure. Provident RN Dennis Kosuth was deeply concerned about what would happen to people who came to the ER during the closure. When he questioned management, he was told they would call 911. On the first day of the ER's closure, the Chicago Department of Public Health revealed that COVID-19 was disproportionately affecting African-American Chicagoans who make up 30 percent of the Windy City's population, but represented a shocking 72 percent of COVID deaths. Over the next two weeks, the Provident nurses gathered nearly 3,000 signatures, which they delivered to a city council member, and held another protest at the Cook County Clerk's office to speak out against the closure. The ER reopened on April 20, two weeks earlier than planned. But the fight for patients is far from over. "We want a follow-up meeting with commissioners about chronic health disparities and what the plan is to fix them," said Kosuth. "Decades of underinvestment in the community has exposed chronic problems in our society. We need a health care system that provides for everybody." Later that month, at John H. Stroger Hospital of Cook County, located less than 10 miles north of Provident, nurses were fighting for PPE, demanding hair and shoe coverings, and gowns with a higher level of protection. "We weren't using level 4 gowns, which were required for high-risk exposure, we were using level 2," said Consuelo Vargas, an RN at Stroger Hospital who protested with other nurses in front of the hospital to demand the PPE they needed to do their jobs safely. "We made a banner showing nurses wearing shower caps over their shoes," said Vargas, who has been a nurse at Stroger for six years. "After we did our press conference, Gov. Pritzker said, 'No more shower caps for shoe covers.' And after that, we got our supplies." The RNs had already been through a fight for more access to N95 respirators that began long before their April action. The experiences brought them closer together as union members. "It's forced nurses to find their voice and speak up for themselves," said Vargas. "It's forced nurses to not be afraid of repercussions or retaliation from management." Dignity Health sandy reding has been a nurse long enough to remember when the hospital had shelves that were full of PPE. "We had what we needed and could get it, but a few years ago, they implemented 'just- in-time' and reduced inventory to maximize profits," recalled Reding, an RN at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital in Bakersfield, Calif. who is also chair of the professional practice committee (PPC) and a CNA/NNOC board member. "Now there are no reserves for us to draw from." At the start of the pandemic, the hospital had N95 respirators, but soon began to ration them, allowing just one N95 respirator per shift in the telemetry unit, which was caring for suspected and positive COVID patients. "The infection control practices that we're supposed to follow and that we're taught from the very beginning of nursing school were thrown out," noted Reding. "But from CNA, we had the data, the literature, the sources, and a great industrial hygienist and 30 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 0 1,000-nurse vigil to honor fallen nurses MAY 12

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