LISTEN: It’s Left to Everyday Workers to ‘Make it Right’
By Bob Hennelly
On this Memorial Day episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we’re talking about the courage and sacrifices working people are making throughout this county. First up is a conversation with Debbie White, Registered Nurse and head of Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE) — the largest healthcare union in New Jersey — about the ongoing fight for safe staffing laws in the Garden State.
Says, White, “In addition to the improved infection control, we have a slew of other things that are improved with safe staffing,”
Who's standing in the way vital safe staffing legislation? Hospitals and the for-profit healthcare system.
“[Hospitals] claim to want flexibility,” says White. “What they really want is to keep staffing as a line item budget that they can cut down to its lowest number to maximize profits.”
Anthony Almojera, vice-president of the Uniformed EMS Officers Union, Local 3621 and author of “Riding the Lighting: A Year in the Life of a New York City Paramedic”, also talks about the strangulation of Jordan Neely in the New York City subway and how institutional failures have left Emergency Medical Service [EMS] workers to try and “make it right.”
“It’s a herculean task,” Almojera says. “But yet we do it day in and day out.”
Professor Joseph Wilson, meanwhile, zooms out and confronts the age of “gangster corporate capitalism” and “greed-flation” embroiling us all. Newly-elected DC 37 Local 983 President Joseph Puleo is also on hand to talk about how his 4,000 members risked everything during Covid.
“Previous to this,” he says, “we only saw this in horror movies.”
Listen to the entire show below: