The Union Election That Could Change Everything, Part 1

most people. And then you are a National Nurses United and these people are part of a shift of workers who was for the first time running a rank and file slate for the Council of Presidents, which is sort of They're a body that combines the positions of vice president president in the union. They're called Shift Change. And so, Eric, do you want to introduce yourself? All right, my name is Eric Cook. I've been a nurse for thirty two years.

I currently work in the cardiac telemetry floor. And I became a nurse after being a Navy corman in the First Call War and just continued in healthcare from there. I was originally an alvin and then became a registered nurse. And I've been on the past three negotiating teams for Altabates Summit Hospital and I've seen a lot of changes in the attitude and movement of the union in the past twelve years. So I'm hoping with John and Raina and Mark to make a change for our union and

our members for the better. Yeah, I'm glad, glad you could be here to join us. Thank you. Yeah, Rina, do you want to introduce yourself? Hi? There, I'm Rina Lindsay. I have been a California nurse for over thirteen years, and out of those thirteen years, eight of them I've been in Altbate's Medical Center, which was my first union as an r N. How I be an Also, I'm sorry. And also i work in ice you and I've been there through been there for about seven years wow. And

I've worked with Eric a year prior to that. So the reason why I became a nurse, it is a long story, but the bridge version is at the beginning, I wanted to be a lawyer. So when I went to college, kind of fund I was dyslexic, so that kind of backed out. And then I also was a teen mom, which that's something that a lot of people do not know about me. And during that whole process, I wanted to find something that I could be an advocate for people and also know the political side of it.

So nursing became the best benefit. One thing I love about nursing is you can learn everything about the world, to know about people without going anywhere, So that was the thrill. And then also being an advocate for the patients I take care for. In addition to that, you know, knowing my peers and knowing that we all have the similar struggles when it comes to the systems that we work for. Doesn't matter which employer you work for, and so being in the union it gives you that way

of a contract between you and your employer. And along the way there has been some issues which Eric and I and John all been experiencing where things do need to change, and being part of shift change is part where we have to change of leadership and be more transparent between the union, the employer, and the people in general. Hell yeah, and yeah, John, do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah? Sure, I'm John Horronymous. I'm a packy recovery nurse at University

of Chicago. Before that, I was in the medical u for six and a half years, and then before that I was like a associate's degree our end working at the emergency room at holy Cross Hospital. And I also started, which is funny to me, as an LPN, which is the same thing as an LVN that Eric did. And

I was a CNA before that. I decided to become a nurse way back in the day when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after dropping out of high school, and I was thinking about man and maybe it should become like a history teacher, and I was like, oh, why would I want to

go back to this place I hate so much. I dropped out of it, and I personally got like incredibly sick with something called uld sort of kalitis, and I got a bunch of surgeries done and got some really amazing experience being taken care of by nurses, and it became really immediately obvious to me, like I also, like Raina,

wanted to help people. And also I thought that nursing was like a way where even like for you know, individuals, I could change someone's day just a little bit for the better, but also like maybe changed some bigger things. And so I thought nursing was just like a really great way to do that. Also, it's really fortunate to be raised by an amazing nurse. My mom was a nurse and she was always like she's like one of

those people was my hero. And a lot of other nurses in my family, both men and women, including someone who is like a Kentucky Frontier nurses, like the first group of nurse practitioner, nurse midwife back in the like the nineteen forties, back in Kentucky. So I've got a lot of nurses in my family and on this like incredibly proud to be like paring on all the stuff that they have been doing for all their years as like nurses. So and like meeting the folks out in California,

like Raina and Eric. It just makes me feel so good, like we're doing really important stuff in terms of both our daily practice of being a nurse, but also like that we can have like this bigger impact on how things are happening in our profession, in the healthcare industry and just the broader world. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've talked like a decent amount on this show now about sort of the labor issues that have been facing nurses both actually here and in the UK, and I think a

little bit in a couple of other countries. Yeah, I was I was wondering what were the sort of specific things that you all were dealing with, both just in the profession and then also in the union that got you all together to run this slate. Okay, So one of the things that caused us to actually meet by coincidence was one of my co workers, Torol Doordall, who's a Norwegian nurse who's been a nurse here in America

for over thirty years. She contacted Labor Notes and, you know, realizing something was wrong in our union, she started talking with specifically Sarah Hughes at labor Notes, and through labor Notes and Sarah, we were able to connect with John and Chicago, and it was amazing that what we discovered is that our problems here in California were mimicking what they've experienced in Chicago, and through Sarah finding out from other diverse communities of nurses and tech Florida, North Carolina,

New York, in Minnesota that there same things are happening there under our same union. And our complaint was through our union was that we felt we were being siloed. And of course, when I say siloed, is actually in our negotiations. We had seventeen facilities negotiating, but we were told that we were not allowed to communicate with each other. I said it was it was forbidden by the federal mediator. Now why this is? Yes, yes, I know that was

my reaction initially too. There were two other negotiators on the team. It was highly suspicious because the union wanted to put all new nurses onto the negotiating team, and that was a little bit of a red flag. There were so many red flags through this negotiations. I swear I could almost see Lennon's tomb, that's how many red flags there were. It was amazing to us is that they said the mediator forbade us from talking to each other, because that was part of the agreement to have the

federal mediator. The three of us that had previous experience with negotiating just knew that was the wrong thing. And it took over at least about seven months before we started breaking through to other tables and communicating with them on text and having our own zoom conversations with them to convince them that no, this is a lie. We

are allowed to talk to each other. And we end up finding out that we were kind of being railroaded into what we considered an agreement that was less than satisfactory for the workers, for the nurses who have suffered during the pandemic. We could have gotten probably one of the greatest contracts that any nursing body had ever received. We had the industry by the throat. We suffered so much, you know, John, everybody throughout the country, all the nurse

has suffered. Everybody's suffered, but everybody that was at that bedside during the pandemic, we it was a horrific experience. It's great when you take care of people and you

heal them, Yes, it's that's a great thing. But the stress and the you know, the unending anxiety that you felt, and then in the midst of this you have a union that short changes you at a point when we had so much power, and thank Heavens for Sarah to put us into contact with all these other nurses to realize that it wasn't just the subter division of the California Nurses Association that was running things amok. It was actually it seemed to be a perceived playbook plan of

what they were doing throughout the country. And I think nobody perceives themselves as doing evil or anything like that. I think they always think that they're doing it for the better interest of everybody. But that's what's important about a rank and file movement is that every nurse, every person in the union is important and deserves a voice. And we don't need to be gas lit. We don't need to be mistreated by the union that we pay to represent us. We need to be marching on the boss.

We could have had an unending euphoria for nurses with a contract. We could have had great staffing, we could have had better pay, we could have had everything that we wanted to make our work lives to be the best they could be. And it seemed our union already had a preplanned agreement with the corporation. Now they deny that, but it's kind of hard to believe when they had the same agreement that they were supposedly negotiating in silos

that they weren't communicate. Each table was supposedly negotiating their own, but it was the same thing they wanted at every table, and not all the tables were equal. It was very sad for us. Like I said, this is the third negotiating team. I was on the first negotiating team I was on. We lasted over two years negotiating and we went through nine strikes and threatened at tenth and until we got an agreement. So our hospital, obviously it's Altibates

Hospital in Berkeley. Our sister hospital, Summit Hospital in Oakland, and we have affiliated with us, is the Herrot Campus, which is the the psychiatric facility. And we have struggled so much through this pandemic and it was amazing to us that we came up with less than what we should have gotten. I will tell you that thanks to Sarah and meeting all these other nurses, we were able to come back. And I think through fear and intimidation, our union was forced to back us and we're able

to get economically what we wanted. But like the rest of the country, as nurses, we wanted better staffing. We needed more more bodies at the bedside. We're overworked, we're fatigued. Raina worked in the ICU and they had their own COVID unit there. Um. I don't think there was enough tums and roll aids to go around for all of those nurses. The anxiety and um, you know, the heart in your throat and of course John himself, I don't want to his personal business, but you know his experience.

He has long COVID. So we we as nurses, have suffered quite a bit, and we expected a lot more from our union. Yeah, and I mean even just on a very basic level, like no matter what you go through, you have the right for your union not to light you. Let's see, this is a very elementary sort of that's a that's a really elementary thing. Yeah, but like it's really u it's really scary how comfortable some of the people who are paid their wages out of our dues

are with lying to us. I think that's a thing that like, um, you know, like we're one of the things we're specifically fighting for is like transparency and accountability, especially for our staff. And you know, when I, you know, Eric mentioned that I had had long COVID, I'm finally getting I've been to the point where I'm like as recovered as I probably ever will be, and which is great. You know, being recovered from long COVID is so much

better than having long COVID. But you know, I was always like someone that they came to to ask for help with like political sorts of issues inside the union, or they would come to me for Medicare for all or um you know, speaking around things like ratios that sort of stuff, or they would send me off to When the Chicago teachers went on strike in twenty nineteen, I was sent to speak on behalf of our union for them, and you know, just doing the work of I'm kind of a I'm a bit of an agitator.

And then COVID hit and it was just a really surreal experience. And my area the hospital is one of those places where they basically did everything they could to minimize the amount of surgeries we were doing initially when the lockdowns were happening for the first six months of the pandemic, and then but they were moving us into because we are all former ICU nurses, so I would do my shift a few shifts up in the medical ICEU than we made a special clean ICEU because we're

still getting traumas. A University of Chicago apparently sees more penetrating gunshot and stab wounds than any other hospital in the United States. Thirty percent of our traumas are are from some sort of violence, which is substantially higher than anywhere else in the US and then I got sick, right, and so to me, the union was like a thing. It was like, man, this is nice to have. I had never worked at an union hospital before. Getting union raises was like a big step up in my life,

you know. And it was also like, oh yeah, our union's progressive, Like I kind of I like most of the things that it stands for, and I didn't really think of it as someone that needed the union right to do the things that unions really kind of like is the bread and butter of unions, which is like coming in and like helping you when you need help as an individual worker, and you know, when you're not in the middle of like a contract negotiation. And I

got sick with long COVID and lost. We had negotiated this great you know, like COVID six pay polow see, and management just took that away without like from me, without really giving any notice or you know, explaination why. And you sit there trying to get like the help that you need from your Union's like I'm trying to explain why it is that, like this is a problem for me to our labor rep who's like our they

called them business agents. Labor reps whatever. There are people who basically are paid out of our dues to kind of help us in theory like stay organized and be pushing management to do, you know, to follow the contract. And it got to the point where like my partner who's like is like literally screaming at the labor repel. I'm on the phone with the labor rep and she's you know, it's just like what the fuck is your

union even doing? Like why are they not making sure that you are taking care of And it was like this really like come to Jesus moment where you're like, oh, yeah, like this union ship isn't just like you know, flat tudes about like we need a ratio bill in Illinois

or you know, Medicare for all or Bernie Sanders. It's like, oh, this shit is actually like about my material well being and like my family still hasn't recovered from all that because they only you know, after an enormous amount of pressure was put on staff, they finally started looking into it and we got you know, payouts for not just me, but for ten other nurses who had had their COVID pay like cut, you like really unjust ways and really opened my eyes as to like what a union should

be doing. Um, and it really opened my eyes that maybe there's a problem with how staff interact with us as workers, because like there should be you know, we try and like say, like you know, there's a service union service business or service unionism, and then there's rank and value unionism and we have this weird situation sharing union where they tell us where a rank and file democratic union, except the staff kind of treat us like,

you know, it's a business union. So we get told one thing, but then we see another thing and like not that I think that like, uh, it's you know, the whole point of a union, you kind of pull together to take care of people who can't necessarily take care of themselves. In that moment, and like it just took an enormous amount of effort on my family's part to like get that moving, and it just seemed incredibly it was as very eye opening for me as a

you know, my experience here in Chicago. No, that that's really bleak. I mean that that's another thing that you would you know, you would expect a union like to just be on top of not not even just a sort of oh well, you asked them and they started doing it like you you would think that, hey, the people who got COVID doing this job not getting paid what they're supposed to be getting paid would be like priority and not something you have to fight them over.

That is is incredibly crim I don't know, well, I haven't a story for you. So my first year working at out to Bates. Before that, I was working in Swallow hospitals and they gave you certain packages about your benefits. So when it was time for me to give my benefits, I couldn't give my benefits at all because during that

time they were doing it at the yearly. So I said, is there any way possible at least to get something, because mind you, they are and for my benefits, I'm not paying for it anything for it that there should be a reason because if I had any medical issues, what would happen? And basically the union was very lackluster about it. Now, of course I went to the manager,

went to human resource. Basically they basically told me, where there's eighteen hundred nurses, and you know what we're going to do about this issue, and pretty much it was. It has pretty much disappeared about it. There was nothing I could do so for that whole year. So I worked in January of two fifteen, I had to wait till the following year to get benefits. To get medical benefits, jes Now, I got everything else, so be honest, I got everything else, But the medical benefits is important. But

thank god I don't have any health issues. Thank god my daughters didn't have any health issues where we didn't require any help and there wasn't in an emergency. But when I started noticing there were other nurses or teas that were spirits of the same thing. Because a lot of us got hired within that time frame, they weren't telling us these issues, and we would end up getting these things sooner. And it's all about transparency, it's all

about our value. And then over the years, people always complain, I'm paying these dues, why are they not helping? Why are not supportive? And when I was actually hired, they were quick to give you the paperwork to tell you how to pay this. Also they could take money off your dues quicker than what about the history about the union? Why is the history is? Why is the union important?

And what you can do if there's a grievemance? There was none of that, and to this day it's still the same thing because I precept new grads and I tell them about, you know, part of the union. What he got. Oh I didn't get a booklet or oh I didn't hear anything about it, but I got this paper here so they could take out my dues. That's what pisses me off of anything. Is that part so so? And then all this stuff dealing with what Eric has told you, what we've been doing with the strikes and

the negotiations meet. Personally, we should have done negotiated within the first year the pandemic, and I think we got everything, but they were quick to say, no, we're going to get all these facilities all together at one and so we can all negotiate. And then the gag order happened, the slam of the gag order, and I'm like, there is a lot of collusion going on and that shit

needs to stop. So I mean things that they don't really tell us, which I think is really a thing that we want to resolve, is they don't really inform you of what your union rights are. You kind of get the initial like here's your wine garden rights, which means that you have a right to representation whenever you're

being disciplined. But aside from that, there's very little discussion inside of our union facilities, in particular about the kinds of things that we have as like union members, what our rights are, what are our rights within the union, how the union works. So many of my co workers don't like a big part of our work is just explaining that there's an election happening. And so you would hear that an election had happened maybe and you know,

you would be like, well, who voted? I don't know, like and you'd get these like, you know, all of the communication from about the election to us as the people who are like the you know, the opposition has all been in these very like plane plane envelopes that don't look like anything like it could be like just an anonymous bill you wouldn't know or junk mail, and so like, you know, as a union member, you have

something called a right to represent representation. So and every union, every union employee and elected officer is considered a fiduciary, has a fiduciary obligation to look out for your financial interest us and if they don't do that, it's called a failure to represent our union in particular, Spends had brags internally about never having a They called them unfair

labor practice. Like if a nurse or any worker in any union decides that their union, you know, did not represent them their financial interests, they can file something called an unfair labor practice claim for failure to represent. Our union is like they've never had an unfair labor practice claim.

Stick We've foy had one of their unfair labor practice claims, and somehow it got like withdrawn like in this really like sketchy way, and it was like just a random one that we picked to to see what happened, and so then it got like assigned like a special like liaison like afterwards, like they're like, oh, we weren't supposed to do that, like when we contacted the Department of Labor, We're going to look at that again and figure out

what's going on with it. And it also turns out when we started doing research, which I think every union member listening to this should know, every union has to file paperwork they're legal. There's legally mandated reporting. So there's things called LM two's and nine nineties that you can get from the Office of labor management. You google them and they'll figure you can search for your own union

and you get to see the union finances. And we found out that there's like forty two million dollars that our unions chief in the bank account. And this goes to there is an article it was in Jacobin I'm not sure about like the financialization of unions, and we're like forty two million dollars. What is that? It's like and they, you know, unions will brags like, oh, we've got a forty two million dollars war chest, but like, what are we spending that forty two million dollars on?

Is it to like fight arbitrations and constantly be making like our like working conditions better and taking fights to the bosses? And is like no, Actually, what they're doing is they're spending that money on settling unfairly for practice claims so they don't actually officially stick. And even against uh, you know, isn't to go to war against our you know supposed you know, I mean to go to war against management. It's to go to war against kind of us.

And you think about it, it's just it's just so wild when you start digging into this stuff it's just crazy. Um, Eric, you want to tell them about the office at Oakland. Yeah, so obviously we're in the heart of the empire. Um. You know, I live of just a few miles from the CIENA headquarters and I've been there many times prior to the pandemic. Um, you know, and I have taken part in lobbying in Washington, DC on behalf of the union.

You know, nurses from all across the country that are in the Union go to DC and we lobby for uh, you know, not only for single payer UH and Medicare for all, but you know, individual bills that will benefit nurses across the country, whether they're in the union or not. And you know, I'm very familiar with it. I've lobbied in Sacramento, and I've bent to the NNU convention in Minnesota. So I've met a lot of nurses across our union.

In fact, it's one of the when you do that, that's about the only time you get to reach out and see other union members. One of the things I will tell you that John and I and the person that's not on the call right now is Mark Goodick. He is an American citizen now, but he was a Canadian nurse before, and he is right now working on our campaign video to introduce us to a broader audience.

And that's why he's not on the call tonight. We should be intermingling and talking with other nurses across the country. I should not be siloed here in Oakland and not knowing that what a nurse is doing in Texas. And yeah, we need to be part of our pledges that we need to join hands across this country. Every nurse needs to see. We need to digitalize our contract. We need

to see University of Chicago's contract digitalized. We need to be sharing our contracts so we know what good things that maybe they got in Texas, or what good things they got at the University of Chicago, or what good things we have in our contract. We need to see that nurses can say, hey, I want that language. We need to be sharing that. I don't know why it's not happening or why it's just at the upper tiers of union management that they see these things, but we

need to be joined together. No more siloing nurses. You know altivates the nurses stay in your lane, Kaiser nurses stay in your lane. University of Chicago stay in. You're like, no, no, no, no, we need to be one fighting body for the betterment of nurses. Uh doubt. You know, it's amazing when you find out that we have a beautiful building that the

Union purchased in downtown Oakland. Um. You know, they only occupy a few floors of it and they rent out the rest, and you know what, it is a fabulous building and it would be great for it to be a headquarters where we're we're not just fighting and lobbying for Democratic politicians, but we're actually fighting for nurses at the bedside. And that's what you know, our whole mission is that we're going to be running for is for

the council presidents. We need to take the macro focus down to what is happening at the bedside for every nurse across the country and make the change for the better for them. And that's the big difference here. I'm all for an activist union and I think and we have been, the Union is active, and you know climate change and you know how the environment affects the community.

These things are important, but it's more important that we take care of the nurses at the bedside and offer opportunities for those nurses who want to be involved to make the community better. We need to have those resources available for them. And if we make nurses lives at the bedside better, we're going to have more nurses available to make the community better. And that's what we need to be working on. It is a it is going to be a fight. I can't be more more honest

than to tell you we are David versus Goliath. We are four nurses who really have no big national exposure, but the most important thing we have is that we're bedside nurses and we know what's important for bedside nurses. I do want to say, like, there's four of us who are running for the for the council presidents, but we would not be even talking to you if we didn't have like at least one hundred nurses all over like the hospitals that we're based in, like doing the

work of building our campaign. So I do want to point out that, like, because like our slate is like free white guys and it's RAINA, and RAINA is like and we want to make sure that we're not that it's we made. The choice that we made was not you know, us coming together as four individuals being like, we should fix the union by ourselves. It was this we keep mentioning labor notes, there's a healthcare worker chat with a fair number of nurses in our union. And

we noticed that there was an election coming up. And this is also at the time when both altbates was having their issues. And then in Cook County we had a particularly traumatic firing of a very popular staffer who without any without any input from the local nurses or elected local nurse leadership. And we got together and we all were like, what are we going to do? This is crazy? And we had people like we are like, well,

who would do? Like we have this opportunity and if we run as a slate, we can do things like get access to we can send emails out to other nurses and break down those silos connect nurses from across the country. And we're like, well, if we don't do anything, we're kind of stuck in this kind of like square one.

You know, a few small hospitals talking to each other, not small, but you know a few hospitals talking to each other, still struggling against like these kind of silos that have been constructed for us by staff and we had a vote and there was you know, over twenty nurses all together raise their hands and where like, we could do this with an imperfect group of people that we recognize asn't like the fully representative of everyone in

the union, but are fully committed to democratizing the union, or we could sit and wait. And a nurse who had been in the union for a very long time and she's now retired, said, if you all don't take this chance, you don't know what could happen in you know, three years from now union could be completely different. And so two thirds of everyone in that call said it's time to go, and we don't care. We would rather that you run and take that swing and maybe get

big for all of us. So a big part of what we're doing is like I've got a meeting with you know, cook counting nurses on Thursday, and they're all basically going to come to me and tell me all the shit that I need to do for them, not the other way around. When you're the rank and file leadership, you know, it's like taking that pyramid and you invert it, right.

The people who are matter the most are the regular bedside nurses and all we can do as like people who step up into that role is we take that. We take that heat and put ourselves out there so that we can enact what our co workers are asking us for. I literally have co workers walking up to me completely unsolicited. I'm a very like I'm not walking around telling I like I told a few people up front in the beginning, because I was like, all right, you're about to see my face on some flyers, let

me tell you why. Um. But I now have coworkers coming to me and they're like, John, you've got to tell me what's going on because I heard a little bit about it and I need to help you. I'm just like, okay, it's very it's like it's a little bit like a drug. But I have to be careful because, like I like, I can't let this whole thing like none of this. We all have to stay humble as we're doing this. Because all four of us, John, all four of us were volunteering to help other people to

run exactly. We were like, okay, we're here, you know, John Mark raining on myself. We're here to help you. Guys who's running now, I'm going to help you. We're gonna help you and and then it's like the crickets, you know, and it's like and it goes to show exactly what happened. It goes to show how impoverished. The internal to mycy of our union is that people who are leaders already did not feel comfortable or prepared to

take on that kind of leadership role. You know, these are nurses who have been in our union for decades, who are taking fights to their bosses all the time already, and they did not feel that they knew enough about the union because there's an intentional I believe, like obscuring

of how the union works. And that's like how you end up with a situation where people are like, well, I guess we're just kicking the door down for all these people who we know will be doing it better when when we get it situated so that they can do it better. It's amazing, though, to tell us that an America and History class, or you have Civics class, you learn about the US government, right, you know how

it functions, how it runs. But when it comes to our union, we were all asking each other, you know, we're putting pieces together. Oh wait, I know the council presidents. Yeah, well, how does this person fit into it? How does the board fit into this? Well, how does the election run? How is it done? We had no We had to search out the answers. We had to call all sorts of people, and we were only getting bits and pieces. There should be a clear outline of how you run

a democracy and a union. I mean, it shouldn't even be that difficult. You know, obviously there'd be specific rules for the union, but they shouldn't be occluded. They should be you know, there shouldn't be occulted from the members. We should clearly know how you step forward to be a more of a contributing member to the union, to run and to serve the others in the union. And that was an amazing thing that we're finding out amongst each other. It's like, wow, how does our union run?

I mean how? Why is it difficult to find out these things? And I mean I don't think it's insurmountable for us. I don't think that should disqualify us. I don't think if we can step in and do healthcare in a pandemic, we can very easily learn how to how the union functions, and a quick, a quick little tutorial. I don't think that's going to be a big deal for us, but yeah, it's pretty amazing. If we're talking about democracy in the Union. How is it that it

takes I mean, to find the buy laws. We can all tell you it took a tremendous amount of effort to find the by laws that are used runs by. Hold On, hold on, let me tell sorry about the bylaws. So we have a nurse in Chicago who decided to make a pain of themselves about how to get the by laws, and then instead they went to the union be like, I want to see the by laws. I want to see the by laws, and they were less like you know like, and they give them the runaround.

And essentially they gave him he got a personally delivered envelope that was like a photocopy of a photocopy of the photocopy of the by laws. And it's funny because the legally the by laws are all spopos to be filed with the federal government. And like, from our pressure and organizing to figure out how our union worked, they had to publish the newest set of by laws and

on the federal reporting websites. I was in Oakland in twenty nineteen for the Global Nurse Assembly, and there was an after party and it was a bunch of staffers and like, you know, some nurses and you know, just chit chatting, and I was like, man, be really good.

I told the story about you know, like the you know, the nurse you tried to get by finally got a copy of the by laws to you know, some of these one of these staffers, like, man, it'd be really great if we, you know, could figure out how are you know, getting hints for other union works, and just as like, good luck with that, and they just disappeared.

Ways I'm not yeah, I mean because because what we're finding is that at any staff that helped nurses learn how the union works find themselves out of a job. Like that's what's really that's what really sketches everyone out is when like people, I mean, you all can tell tell the story about the staffer who like got random foul.

So I will tell you that there are a lot of great labor refers, a lot of really great people out there, But to tell you that they would communicate with us, because obviously I told you I've done all these other actions, so I know a lot of people, and they have my personal number just because we would you know, when we're in other cities, you know, you text each other and hey, we're at this place, now

where do we meet you? Etc. So we were getting texts from some labor reps in the union saying, you know, you guys need to stand tall. There are a lot of us supporting you. We can't come out and publicly

support you because we'll get fired. What So. Yeah, so we were getting these texts from the labor reps saying what they're doing to you is wrong, and they were you know, we actually got together and we we wanted to go out on strike in October, and we were getting this runaround from a group of this I thought

they were it was just an inner cabal. Little did I know that it probably extends throughout the you know, the organization, but that they were telling us that there was no need for a strike, and it seemed they were trying to just pressure us into taking a pretty lowball contract. And so we're getting push you know, the good labor reps are texting us like stick it, stick

to it, stick to it. And we actually got a postcard campaign and we actually drove up to the executive director's house in Sacramento, knocked on our door and delivered five hundred some postcards that we organized on our own, not not with you know, it wasn't a union driven, it was just nurses union, nurses driven, and we delivered postcards saying we want to go out on stripe, and the union, of course still fought us on it, but

we were allowed to go out on stripe. And there's a video of us confronting the executive director at our strike line, asking her why we were gagged, why the mediator gagged us, and she clearly didn't know what was going She said, the mediator wouldn't dag you, Why would they gag you? So she didn't even know what was

going on at our table. We then got we were contacted and they we were told, oh my god, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off because they're petrified that they might use their jobs, that they've

been exposed to what they've been doing to you. And so one of the labor reps that used to work for us, she used to be at our hospital, and then she moved along and she was at Suttersilano and her nurses were asking Hey, did you see this video of this speech Eric made on this you know, at the strike line. And it was a speech where I kind of excoriated the union about why they would gag us, that that wasn't you know, we needed to be united and we didn't need a union, you know, working behind

our back. They needed to stand with us. And so she says, well, let's see. So she was looking at the video on her Union cell phone and with the negotiators, nurse negotiators at her hospitals at Arsalana, who were also in negotiations with us that we weren't supposed to talk to because you know, the mediator forbade us. So she's showing the video and they thought because she was formerly at our hospital, that she was our inside scoop for all this information, I can swear to God and take

a lie detector test. I had one exchange with her during like the twenty one months that we were negotiating, and it was at a joint Bargaining Council meeting on zoom where they kept the union kept muting us on zoom and prevent and preventing us from writing in the chat because we were saying we want to go out on strike. We want to go out on strike. And next thing you know, we would find out we couldn't

type in the in the chat. So I texted her and says, can you see this, I'm trying to write in the chat and I'm forbidden from writing in the chat. They muted me, they I can't type in and she goes, I'm feel for you, buddy, I feel for you. That was my only exchange with her that caused her and the fact that her nurses asked her to look at this video with them, that's what cost her her job. She's it was. It was clearly guilt by association and

the charges were outrageous for her. We had labor reps leave because they just felt that it was they couldn't live with themselves with what they were doing to the nurses. It was incredible for them that they're here to work for the nurses, there to work for the most progressive

union in the country, and it was a fraud. That's been like a big, like consistent problem is that we know that they're busting their own like the staff are supposed to have a union, The staff have their own contract, and that's a normal thing inside unions, right, yeah, you know, to keep you know, we believe in or that every worker who you know works for wages should be in

a union. And we have seen time and again that like the like the contracts, that they've busted their own unions, so like that they've there was a slate that was run of nurses in our not nurses of the staffers. I think it was in twenty twenty one where they were like trying to get something together to change you know, things inside you know, how they relate to their management. And and several of those uh staff are we're basically

illegally fired. So this is like I mean, and I know you keep saying Jesus a lot, but like there's a reason, you know me, I wouldn't be running into this sort of situation if it wasn't like so like out of this world. The stories that we hear, and they're the same. This is what's disturbing, is it? And it's because the union is baited. Like I was just talking to a lawyer today. She was looking over the by laws of our union and she's like, this is set up like a local like it's one big local union.

It's got like a tiny little committee of people who are making the decisions of affect or we believe that it's mostly the director non nurse director staff that make the decisions, but these four people kind of rubber stamp them and that they make decisions for one hundred and fifty you know, thousands some on nurses and it's so centralized.

You know, this is one of the things is describe as like it's almost irresponsible because you know, we live in you know, you know, crazy times, and all it takes is one wrong election or bad decision and Supreme Court and it would literally our union could be dissolved with like you know, if they just arrested you know a handful of people and uh and froze our bank accounts.

And a big part of our goal is to help disperse those resources out into foster more local leaderships so that any event that you know, something you know, like that terrible happens like that, we're not caught without anything. Because the way it situated now is we have this massive concentration of of all of the decision making and resources in a very small group of hands, and most of these people are are not have never been nurses, or if they've been nurses. They've been out of practice

for so long that they wouldn't know how. I mean, maybe they can put band aids on. I don't need to, like, I don't want to disparage anybody. You know, a nurse is a nurse. I know nurses. You know, you learn it and you learn a lot of things. It's really important, great skill, but there's something to be in practice. If I, you know, I can walk back into the medical issue I used to work in, you know now it's going on like five years and be the same nurse that I was when I was at the peak of my

practice there. And there's a real key thing too. I think we're all committed. None of us are doing this because we want to be the face of California Nurses Association National Nurses United for the next twenty like thirty years. We're doing this because we feel that there's a real value to there being a continual turnover in leadership, new ideas,

people bringing in new energy. We think that nurses should have the opportunity to work release time so that they could see how the union works as staffers from the inside and then go back to the regular jobs. We're doing everything we can to like I like my job. I think my job is great. I don't want to

leave my job. But doing what we can to bring our mentality as those bedside nurses to the sensibility of running the union, because nursing does give you a lot of really powerful tools, as like you have to be able to listen to people. We're not listening a lot tonight, but you know, we've got to talk and get the word out. Being able to kind of see. A big thing we see is like, you know, you have a lot of people who will tell you things and then

they act in a different way. And that's a big part of nursing practices, being able to understand what people's real deal is, and you know, it's kind of that's one of the things where it's real frustrating, is like we know when people are lying to us, Like I know, we all know when like the staff are lying to us. Nurses do have bullshit detectors, that's for sure. You know. I slept through the class in nursing school where they teach you how to grow eyes in the back of

your head. The class I slept through where they teach you to get a through arm. And I really regret sleeping through the class where they teach you how nurse mitosis like being able to asexually reproduce an extra nurse. But I definitely didn't sleep through the class where I can learn where I can see when someone is saying one thing and then but it's like what they're fucking lying to me? Yeah, And that's a that's like a

constant theme. And that's one of the things that's driving a lot of our organizing is that a lot of people are tired of just being lied to by people who were paying their paychecks. And it's like and it's like they think that we I mean, we have staff informants, right, we know people inside staff who are allied with us. We know how they talk about us when we're not there. They talk about us like we can't figure this shit out,

And it's like, motherfucker. I know how to keep a person alive who like who shouldn't be alive, Like I know how to walk a family through like you know, multiple family members with conflicting opinions through like an end of life discussion, and along with a doctor who can't really make up his mind, like you don't think it while I've got you know, like multiple pressors and like continuous dialysis. You don't think I can't figure out, Like when you are like telling us one thing and then

another thing's happening. We know why they're canceling meetings right now. They don't want us talking to each other where we get that and this is kind of like it's it's almost like a feminist practice, like of women talking to each other makes men nervous, right, And it's like nurses talking to each other makes management nervous, and it sure as hell is making our union nervous. We want our union to be encouraging nurses talking to each other and

not like discouraging it. And anytime someone is discouraging people from talking to each other who have similar concerns, that is an immediate you know, like Eric was saying the red flags. It's like this is the kind of thing that like this, it's like an almost an abusive relationship. You know, I would not be running if it wasn't this intense of a problem this has been. It could

happen here. Join us tomorrow for two of the interview, where Shift Change discusses more of their vision for what the union could be in the meantime, you can find us on Twitter or Instagram That Happen Here pod, and you can find cool Zone Media the same place as at cool Zone Media. We've also posted a link in the description to Shift Changes go fund me if you want to help support their campaign. It could Happen Here

as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolson Meta dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening