National Nurses United

Some 43 percent of nurses reported that they are afraid of infecting their families–a nightmare situation that for some nurses was not just hypothetical, but became reality. Katherina Faustino, an ICU RN at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson, Nev., contracted Covid at work and subsequently infected everyone in her household: husband, brother, in-laws. "I shouldn't have to put my life in danger just to do my job," said Faustino, who did not have to be hospitalized but developed significant respiratory symptoms. "I got Covid and I brought it home to my entire family." Some 87 percent of hospital nurses reported reusing at least one type of single-use PPE, such as an N95 respirator or a face shield. Only 23 percent of nurses reported being tested. And 42 percent of nurses reported feeling more stressed than before the pandemic began. "Nurses warned about reopening too early, and now this survey shows that nurses are bearing the brunt of premature relaxing of shelter-in-place orders," said Castillo. "We are facing a record-breaking number of infections everyday across the country … Nurses are willing to be at the bedside caring for Covid-19 patients; their employers should be willing to protect them. Sadly, that's not the case." NNU recently launched its fourth survey, which can be found at www.NationalNursesUnited.org. T he national situation is grim, but nurses know it would be even worse if not for their advocacy on behalf of them- selves, their coworkers, their patients, and their community that is only possible through union representation. "Using our collective power is the only way we win for patients," said Dawson during the roundtable. "Nurses did not back down before the pandemic, and we won't back down during and after this pandemic." Nurses put their collective power on full display Aug. 5, when NNU staged its single biggest day of action in the history of the organization. Thousands of nurses at more than 200 facilities across 16 states and the District of Columbia safely held rallies, protests, car caravans, sticker- ups, and other creative events inside and outside workplaces to educate the public and put employers on notice that the priority should be to value human life over money. They had a simple message: "Save lives!" "Nurses know that this country's rampant social, economic, and racial injustice has been killing our patients all along. Covid-19 is just forcing us as a society to face these problems," said Castillo. "These recent Covid surges and uncontrolled infections and deaths, the failure of employers to protect our nurses and other workers, the outrageously high rates of unemployment and hunger, the totalitar- ian crackdown on protesters—every crisis we are seeing now can be traced back to our failure to value human lives over profit." And public-sector nurses in two California communities, the San Francisco Bay Area's East Bay and San Joaquin County, on Oct. 7 took a stand against intolerable and unsafe workplace conditions by going out on strike for five days, what is believed to be the first strikes by hospital nurses since the Covid-19 pandemic began. "Our patients are some of the most marginalized people in our communities and we have an obligation to stand up for them and to demand that the county provide us the tools we need to keep our- selves safe, our patients safe, and our communities safe," said Mawata Kamara, an RN at San Leandro Hospital, part of Alameda Health System (AHS), and a member of the CNA board of directors. "We do not take lightly the decision to strike during a pandemic, but we feel we have no choice if we are going to get the changes we need to provide the very best care for our patients during this critical time." As of press time, one of the AHS nurses' demands was met: The county board of supervisors voted to oust all the current AHS trustees and return with new negotiators to the bargaining table. So many things went wrong with how Covid was handled in the United States, with decisions based on profit instead of patient and public health needs, but nurses do see a silver lining: that the pan- demic is forcing the country to understand that health care cannot 18 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 J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0 Data Dodgers O n sept. 28, National Nurses United (NNU) released a report, "Sins of Omission: How Government Failures to Track Covid-19 Data Have Led to More Than 1,700 Health Care Worker Deaths and Jeopardize Public Health" as well as a statement on the impor- tance of Covid-19 data transparency. In both, NNU condemned the failure of federal and state governments to track and publicly report transparent, accurate, and timely data on the Covid-19 pandemic. The continued lack of detailed, consistent data endangers the health and lives of nurses, other health care workers, and their patients. Since the beginning of the pandemic, NNU has been tracking the deaths of U.S. registered nurses as well as the Covid-19 infec- tions and deaths of health care workers because no one was reporting this information. The "Sins of Omission" report researched and confirmed the deaths of more than 1,700 health care workers. The report includes a list of the known names of 213 registered nurses who died of Covid-19 as of Sept. 16, as well as the known names of 617 additional health care workers. The report also highlighted how nurses of color, particularly Filipino and Black nurses, are shockingly and disproportionately represented among the deaths, showing that non-white RNs are bearing the brunt of the pandemic just as Black, Brown, Indige- nous, and other patients of color are bearing the brunt among the general population. Though nurses of color make up only about 24 percent of the nation's nursing workforce, the report showed that they made up 58.3 percent of the RN deaths; though Filipino nurses make up only 4 percent of the U.S. nursing workforce, they represented 31.5 percent of the RN deaths tracked in the report. "We cannot forget the deaths of so many health care workers," said Zenei Cortez, RN, a president of NNU. "These deaths were avoidable and unnecessary due to government and employer willful inaction. Nurses and health care workers were forced to work with- out personal protective equipment they needed to do their job safely. It is immoral and unconscionable that they lost their lives. Our state and federal governments must require hospitals and other health "Using our collective power is the only way we win for patients. Nurses did not back down before the pandemic, and we won't back down during and after this pandemic."

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