National Nurses United

National Nurse Magazine April 2011

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Main Street_3 5/5/11 11:37 AM Page 14 A s members of National Nurses United, nurses have fought hard to be covered by a contract that spells out many basic standards: wages, healthcare and retirement benefits, and work rules. RN contracts improve nursing standards and working conditions, and protect and empower nurses to have the practice environment they need to work to their full potential as effective patient advocates. But, as conditions in recent months throughout the nation and many states have reminded us, patients, their families, and their communities need a contract too. In recent decades, the nation's resource allocations have become skewed in ways that undercut general welfare. While workers have become more productive, they have increasingly not shared in the fruits and gains of our society. Millions of jobs have gone offshore and what work remains all too often fails to provide a living wage. People are unable to find decent jobs to support their families in what is by far the richest country in the world. Safety nets are shredded, schools starved, pensions plundered, and workplace safety rules and environmental protections eroded while poverty, homelessness, and even hunger is on the rise. The changes in healthcare symbolize the crisis facing far too many American families. The promise of genuine reform that would guarantee healthcare for all, based on patient need rather than on ability to pay, has largely run aground. Rather than adopting the most effective reform, by upgrading and expanding Medicare to cover everyone, the government enacted a flawed law that further entrenches a callous private insurance system with minimal controls over the insurance giants. Millions of Americans remain without access to care, facing bankruptcy from unpayable medical bills, forced to choose between needed care and other basic bills. And the grand goal of a single system of quality care for all continues to elude us. Talk of "shared sacrifice" conceals the reality that nearly all the sacrifice is demanded from nurses and other working people. Wall Street profits hit a 60-year high in 2010 and disparities in income continue to grow. The top 1 percent own more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. Taxes are the lowest they've ever been not only for the super-rich, but for the biggest corporations, as well. Some 42 percent of companies actually paid no income taxes for two or more years during the period 1998 to 2005. Some even got million-dollar refunds! In stark contrast, life for working people in this country over the past 30 years has gotten worse. Many working people cannot remember the last time they got a raise, and many have been hit with pay cuts. At the same time, costs for basic necessities—food, gas, utilities, rent, and health insurance—have skyrocketed. Infrastructure and services that ordinary, working people rely on are falling apart: our public schools and colleges, roads, parks, libraries, public health programs, and fire and police departments. What few retirement benefits people might expect through Social Security and Medicare are now under steady attack in Washington. All of these conditions undermine growth and prosperity for the nation as a whole. Still, this is not enough for some of our elected officials. They want to go even further, setting their sites on a range of institutions that protect working people, especially unions, that do not accept the corporate priority and see ways to fight back in order to restore some balance to the system. And now, as our public coffers are bleeding red ink due largely to regressive tax policies, states, counties, and cities are balancing their budgets by cutting critical safety net programs, like Medicaid and food stamps, instead of requiring corporations and the elites to pay their fair share. As registered nurses and advocates for quality care for all, nurses see firsthand what these declines bring. They see what happens to abandoned patients and communities when the American people have no effective contract with our government, not just in terms of an individual's health, but the health of our society overall. NNU leaders have said it's time to take a stand, time for Americans to insist on a fair contract for everyone, for Main Street, not just more bailouts and bonuses for Wall Street! We call our campaign the "Main Street contract for the American people." Judging from the massive protests we have joined in Madison, Wis., and in In the coming weeks and months, NNU members, working with others from coast to coast, will engage in varied efforts to reverse the current, often harmful, budget priorities of national and state government, and restore the promise of the American dream for nurses and other working families. Among our proposed actions: HOLD ELECTED LEADERS AND CANDIDATES ACCOUNTABLE. Do they support a program to further enrich Wall Street, or a Main Street Contract to secure the goals of guaranteed healthcare, a secure retirement for all, jobs at living wages, and the other priorities of a Main Street economy? SPONSOR AND PROMOTE NATIONAL AND STATE LEGISLATION FOR MORE EQUITABLE TAX POLICIES. Rather than cut Social Security 14 N AT I O N A L N U R S E or privatize Medicare, address budget problems by assuring that big corporations and the wealthiest of our society once again pay their fair share with the revenues designated to economic development and social services. ENCOURAGE COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS, LOCAL GOVERNMENTS, AND LABOR BODIES to support the Main Street Contract. INVITE NURSES, PATIENTS, AND OTHERS IN OUR COMMUNITIES TO TELL THEIR STORIES through our growing network of social media forums. PROTEST CORPORATE OUTLAWS WHO PLUNDER OUR PUBLIC TREASURIES, PENSIONS, AND SAFETY NET PROGRAMS while evading their financial responsibilities to America. 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 APRIL 2011 PRECEDING PAGE: FEVERPITCHED |ISTOCKPHOTO.COM (SIGN); RANPLETT |ISTOCKPHOTO.COM (CLOUDS) Bringing the Main Street Contract to Life

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