National Nurses United

the way we fight for justice in our communities," said Hoechst. "We can't have one without the other." Nurses in the University of California (UC) system have advanced their work on these issues by developing a racial-social justice committee comprising UC nurses from throughout the state. Committee Chair Rosa Villareal, RN explained, "UC has this whole diversity and inclusion initiative, and it's not adequate. There's a lot of fluff that's going on, without a lot of investment, money-wise or power-wise." Villareal said the UC committee, which meets every other month, was a logical next step to rallies that UC nurses held during the uprisings for racial justice in 2020. She and her colleagues felt they could be doing more to create tangible change. So they took their first step by having the Division of Social Justice and Equity hold a workshop for them. Now, the issues they are tackling include advocating for expanded language translation for patients (especially critical, said Villareal, for her facility's large Chinese and Latino patient popula- tion), educating nursing students about their role as social justice advocates, considering representation and not just seniority in the clinical ladder, and demanding representation on hospital commit- tees run by management. "There's not much diversity in management. So you have this imbalance of power that's happening in these committees. The nurses who should be on these committees are the floor nurses, who are a more diverse population," said Villareal. As an indigenous Lat- inx woman herself, Villareal said she knows representation matters. The UC nurses are also looking toward their contract, coming up in the next year, and considering how to influence change for their patients, colleagues, and communities through bargaining. NNU nurses across the country are already using their contracts to advance these issues, including by establishing equity committees, and by resolving racial disparities in pay, as RNs at UChicago Medi- cine Ingalls Memorial Hospital did while fighting for their very first contract. Ingalls RN Mattie Newsom said that during bargaining, a hospi- tal attorney told nurses that to make more money, they should go work in a "lily white" community (Ingalls cares for a largely Black and Brown patient population). Newsom said nurses were already incensed at the attorney's racist language when they discovered, by asking around, that some of the white Ingalls nurses were already making $3 or more on average per hour than Black nurses and nurses recruited from outside the United States. "To me, that was one of the most discouraging things. It took all I had to continue to work there," said Newsom, who is Black. The Ingalls nurses stood together and demanded pay equity and a grid that wasn't based on management's whims. When management saw that the nurses refused to be divided, regardless of background, they had to come to the table. "At that point in time, they began to eat crow and work with us to set up a grid so that nurses' salaries would reflect an equalness according to years of service," said Newsom. Although the Ingalls nurses settled that contract in 2020, before NNU's new division officially launched, Newsom said they had NNU's support all the way, and she is thrilled to know there is now even more infras- tructure for nurses to do racial and social justice work moving forward. "I am elated to know [the union has] a division like this. We need all the support and all the advocacy we can get," she said. Villareal hopes nurses across the country will feel empowered by the creation of the division to make changes in their own facilities, even if they don't think of themselves as activists. "A lot of nurses don't understand they are already doing the work. Just becoming a nurse and knowing you want to make change, that's the driving force of all activism," Villareal said. "We are a very powerful organization, and it's so important that everyone is at the table," Kennedy emphasized, noting that building equity, and growing collective power is the only way working people will win on all the issues that matter, including Medicare for All. "What we stand for as a union—that we truly believe in having equity, inclusion, and recognition, because that's who we are—I think that's so important. We are walking the walk and talking the talk," said Kennedy. "It's not easy to do this work; it's a long journey. But we are going to get there." Kari Jones is a communications specialist for National Nurses United. O C T O B E R | N O V E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 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 A T I O N A L N U R S E 21 Schedule an NNU Social Justice Workshop today The Division of Social Justice and Equity offers a series of interactive, action-oriented workshops. The workshops are intended to build our collective power to confront some of the most crucial social justice struggles of our time. Participants will leave these workshops with a deepened understanding of how structural injustice operates; skills to name, understand, and overcome racism and gender oppression; and fire in our bellies to use our collective power to transform society. We offer three workshops: • Gender Justice for Nurses and For All People (4 hours) • Nurses United for Racial Justice (4 hours) • Bargaining for Racial and Gender Justice (2 hours) To schedule the workshop series or a single workshop, send an email to: SocialJusticeEquityInfo@NationalNursesUnited.Org

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