AFT Healthcare Divisional Meeting

AFT's healthcare division has made involving members and active participation in shaping healthcare policy and legislation its main priorities in the next two years.

"Many of our locals have been around a long time," said Candice Owley, AFT vice president and chair of the AFT Healthcare program and policy council, pointing to the need for locals to recapture the feeling members had when they first organized.

Newly organized locals have an unmistakable energy, but that changes over time, noted Owley. AFT Healthcare will work with its locals to reach out to members, especially its newer, younger members, to encourage greater activism in the union.

A little encouragement was all Christine Judd needed. A financial counselor at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington and member of University Health Professionals, Judd got involved in her union because someone simply asked her, she told the group. She started out making signs for an informational picket. Today she is a vice president of her local.

If you want younger, newer members to get active, ask them to do things in increments, advised Judd. "You have to take baby steps. Otherwise members get overwhelmed."

This year, all healthcare members will be asked to participate in policy and legislative matters. Healthcare reform, for example, si a critical issue for the next president and the new Congress, and AFT Healthcare members must be part of shaping that reform. And later this year, Medicare will stop paying for so-called avoidable conditions, such as bedsores and patient falls. There also will be a huge shift in how government and hospitals pay for care, said Owley, warning that nurses could end up spending more time documenting care instead of providing it.

The division also will continue to push for federal legislation that focuses on workplace issues such as short staffing and mandatory overtime.

Finally, helping the union grow through organizing will continue to be a priority for the division. "It is an enormous challenge to organize private hospitals, and the AFT is committed to organizing healthcare workers," said Owley. Evidence of this difficulty was offered by union activist Margaret Nielsen, an emergency room nurse at Our Lady of the Resurrection Health Care system. "I thought our problems were unique to Resurrection, but these problems are everywhere," she said.