WHEREAS:
Health care is one of the nation’s most important and fastest-growing economic sectors employing more than 22 million workers, with approximately 1.9 million openings projected annually over the next decade, yet millions of health care workers and licensed health care professionals continue to lack a union voice despite facing chronic understaffing, workplace violence, burnout, unsafe working conditions and increasing pressure from large health care corporations; and
WHEREAS:
Millions of health care workers and licensed health care professionals work throughout the United States, and despite the indispensable services they provide, the overwhelming majority do not have the protection of a union contract or a meaningful collective voice in decisions affecting their professions, their patients and the delivery of health care; and
WHEREAS:
Health care workers and licensed health care professionals have demonstrated unprecedented interest in organizing over the past several years as employees seek safe staffing, improved patient care, workplace safety protections, fair wages and a meaningful voice in decisions affecting health care delivery; and
WHEREAS:
Affordable, high-quality health care is increasingly beyond the reach of working families as wealthy corporate interests, private equity firms and health care executives divert billions of public and private health care dollars toward executive compensation, corporate expansion, investor returns and other activities that do not directly improve patient care; and
WHEREAS:
Health care workers and their unions stand at the tip of the spear in the broader attack by billionaires and powerful corporations on working people, public services, collective bargaining and the right of workers to have a meaningful voice over the conditions affecting their lives; and
WHEREAS:
Meaningful progress against increasingly consolidated and profit-driven health care corporations can be achieved only by coordinating and unifying AFSCME’s resources at the International and affiliate levels so that health care workers have the strongest possible voice in the workplace, at the bargaining table, in legislative bodies and throughout the political arena; and
WHEREAS:
The accelerating use of artificial intelligence makes organizing health care professionals even more urgent because individual health care workers and licensed health care professionals cannot effectively protect their professions, their patients or their personal data against the power of increasingly consolidated health care corporations and technology companies acting without collective oversight; and
WHEREAS:
AFSCME has long been recognized as a national leader in representing health care workers and licensed health care professionals, and expanding organizing efforts among health care workers and licensed health care professionals presents one of the greatest opportunities to strengthen our union while improving health care for patients and communities across the United States.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will continue to support the organizing of health care workers and licensed health care professionals by dedicating resources, strategic organizing assistance, leadership development and coordinated national organizing efforts to expand union representation throughout the health care industry; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME International, councils, districts and affiliated locals are encouraged to actively identify, reach out to and support unorganized health care workers and licensed health care professionals in their jurisdictions and organize them to join AFSCME; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME shall convene leaders at all levels from affiliates that represent health care workers and licensed health care professionals committed to organizing and building power among health care workers through AFSCME Health Care United to expand organizing of health care workers and licensed health care professionals; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED:
That AFSCME Health Care United will present, on an ongoing basis, to the AFSCME International Executive Board Organizing Committee.
SUBMITTED BY:
Craig Ford, President and Delegate
Charmaine Morales, Secretary-Treasurer and Delegate
NUHHCE/AFSCME Local 1199
Pennsylvania
Stuart Bussey, President and Delegate
R. Douglas Chiappetta, Executive Director
Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD)/AFSCME Local 206
California