Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/1521816
12 ยป RNs in Motion On Aug. 5, thousands of RNs hold more than 200 actions in 16 states and the District of Columbia demanding that hospital employers, elected leaders, and the government take immediate steps to save lives during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. TIME magazine names NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN, to the 2020 TIME 100, its annual list of the most influential people in the world. Mission Hospital RNs in Asheville, N.C., vote by a landslide to join NNOC, defeating a heavily funded anti-union campaign by hospital chain behemoth HCA. This is the first private-sector hospital union election win ever in North Carolina, and the largest at any nonunion hospital in the South since 1975. Nurses score a tremendous victory for the type of infection control measures they have been demanding since the start of the pandemic when the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) directs all general acute-care hospitals to begin Covid-19 weekly testing of all health care workers and all patient admissions. NNU issues the report "Deadly Shame: Redressing the Devaluation of Registered Nurses' Labor Through Pandemic Equity," an in-depth analysis of how nurses' care work is devalued, the resulting inequities, nurses' experiences on the pandemic's front lines, and ways to redress these issues through collective action. In November the Michigan Nurses Association, representing 13,000 members, votes to affiliate with National Nurses United. 2021 Against the backdrop of a continuing pandemic, thousands of NNU members start the new year with hundreds of socially distanced events in more than 19 states and the District of Columbia to demand that hospital employers prioritize patients before profits. Newly elected President Biden advances NNU's demands by activating the Defense Production Act and calling for a federal OSHA emergency temporary standard on infectious diseases. Biden also selects an NNU affiliate leader, Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary C. Turner, RN to serve on the national Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force, created to ensure all people in the United States have access to Covid-19 resources. RNs at UChicago Medicine Ingalls in Harvey, Ill., a suburb south of Chicago, vote overwhelmingly to ratify their historic first contract. Nurses applaud the Medicare for All Act of 2021, H.R. 1976, introduced by Rep. Jayapal (D-WA) and Rep. Dingell (D-MI), and cosponsored by more than half of the House Democratic Caucus including 14 committee chairs and key leadership members. RNRN deploys nurses to assist with Covid-19 vaccine administration to underserved communities in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Los Angeles, California. NNU-sponsored federal ratios bill, based on California's mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios law, is reintroduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown in the Senate and by Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the House. The bill passes the House in April 2021. Some 2,000 RNs at Maine Medical Center in Portland, the state's largest hospital, vote overwhelmingly to unionize. The U.S. House of Representatives passes the NNU- supported bill, H.R. 1195, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act (Rep. Joe Courtney, CT-2). NNU issues a new nationwide survey of 9,200 RNs, revealing that a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, employers are still failing to provide safe staffing, optimal PPE, and testing. NNU condemns the CDC rollback on Covid infection control, calling the new guidelines unjust and disproportionately harmful to workers of color, their families, and communities. On International Nurses Day, NNU nurses gather in front of the White House to lay out more than 400 pairs of empty shoes, representing the nurses who lost their lives on the front lines of Covid. That evening, nurses hold an online vigil and several in-person car caravans across the country to honor fallen colleagues, whose names are projected onto the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Medical Debt Protection Act, a Maryland bill spearheaded by NNU with a broad coalition of Maryland activists, becomes law at the end of May. NNU nurses win landmark OSHA Covid-19 Health Care Emergency Temporary Standard, the first enforceable national Covid-19 standard to protect health care workers and patients. Some 10,000 RNs at 18 HCA hospitals in six states ratify new contracts that include landmark health and safety language and many other improvements. RNs at HCA's Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., vote to ratify their first-ever union contract. More than 14,000 RNs in California and Nevada ratify a four- year contract with Dignity Health (CommonSpirit Health) featuring stronger infectious disease prevention measures for nurses and patients. RNs at Community First Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, ratify their first union contract with strong protections for patients and nurses, averting a planned three-day strike. NNU's sixth nationwide survey of more than 5,000 RNs reveals that employers must do more to comply with the OSHA Covid-19 Health Care standards to protect nurses and other health care workers from Covid-19. NNU launches the Division of Social Justice and Equity to grow nurses' collective power to transform the systems, institutions, policies, and practices that perpetuate inequity and injustice. NNU begins advocacy against hospital industry schemes to treat acute care patients remotely, rather than in a hospital, with the release of an animated video, "Home All Alone." Frontline RNs from across the country, including NNU President Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, RN testify at a congressional briefing on the understaffing crisis in hospitals, accompanied by the launch of a new NNU report, "Protecting Our Front Line: Ending the Shortage of Good Nursing Jobs and the Industry-Created Unsafe Staffing Crisis."