National Nurses United

Filipino_JulAug 11/29/11 10:09 PM Page 15 Care Despite being valued and essential members of the American RN workforce, Filipino nurses must still often challenge and overcome bias and discrimination. By Momo Chang "Their accents are hard to understand." "They all seem to know each other. Are they all related or something?" "Why are they always working? They make so much overtime." These are the types of coded comments that Filipino registered nurses hear all too often in the workplace. While not blatantly racist, these subtle digs belie the prejudice against Filipino nurses that unfortunately still exists among the RN workforce. For Ron Villanueva, a 45-year-old critical care RN with more than 20 years of experience working in the United States, discrimination came in the form of so-called "advice." Several years ago, when Villanueva tried to apply for a promotion to a managerial post, upper management told him, "I strongly advise you not to apply for the position." When he heard that, he flashed back to a previous incident. A year and a half prior, while waiting to be interviewed for a supervisor position, he overheard a different person in upper management say, "Do not hire foreign graduate nurses." It wasn't hard to connect the dots and conclude that his employer, St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco, appeared to be discriminating against Filipino nurses. Villanueva's union, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, eventually filed in August 2010 a class action grievance on behalf of Filipino nurses at the facility, which is owned by the large corporate hospital chain Sutter Health. "I just wanted people to be treated fairly," Villanueva said about why he chose to speak up about the injustice. "Ignorance and intolerance shouldn't have a place here, let alone in San Francisco." And while unfair treatment is often subtle, it can still be shocking and flagrant. As just one example, Filipino nurses at Delano Regional Medical Center in California's Central Valley allege that Filipinos were the only group singled out by the hospital for enforcement of a stringent English-only policy. The Filipino workers, mostly nurses, were threatened with job loss if they were overheard speaking Tagalog. These incidents, and more, show that prejudice against nurses from other countries and of different ethnicities and nationalities is, sadly, still a part of the work environment for many RNs. While discrimination is not just targeted at Filipino nurses, they constitute the largest group of foreign-educated RNs in the United States. Today, one in four immigrant women from the Philippines are nurses, and Filipino nurses make up 69 percent of all foreign-educated nurses seeking licenses in the United States. O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1 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 N AT I O N A L N U R S E 15

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