Holding Corporate Profiteers Accountable to Workers and Patients
As NUHW members, it’s our mission to make sure that healthcare corporations serve the public instead of just serving themselves.
That’s exactly what we’re doing in San Francisco, where Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center is trying to push through a development deal to build a huge new mega-hospital with NO protections for NUHW members’ jobs and insufficient commitments to provide care to low income San Franciscans.
NUHW members, along with community leaders and the California Nurses Association, have stepped up and said NO WAY. And now, because of our union’s advocacy, the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors have done the same.
CPMC executives tried to deceive elected officials and the public about the fact that its deal wouldmaintain its option to close St. Luke’s Hospital, putting our jobs at risk and putting healthcare out of reach for thousands of low-income San Francisco residents.
But now, CPMC’s plans are backfiring. Without an ironclad agreement to keep St. Luke’s open for twenty years, the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors have told CPMC there will be no deal on the new medical center.
City leaders are holding CPMC accountable because NUHW members have made sure they know they’re dealing with a dishonest corporation that cares about one thing and one thing only: maximizing profits at all costs. That’s how a real healthcare worker’s union deals with corporate profiteers like CPMC.
SEIU-UHW, on the other hand, has lined up right behind CPMC, even cutting a deal that guarantees its support for the expansion, with or without protections for workers’ jobs.
I’m proud to be part of a union like NUHW that stands up and fights.
Sincerely,
Porfirio Quintano, EVS, CPMC Pacific Campus
National Union of Healthcare Workers
PS. Last week, our co-workers at Luther Manor Nursing Home in Saginaw, Michigan, settled a contract with no takeaways and bigger raises than they’d received under SEIU. They couldn’t be happier to have joined a union that fights for workers instead of cozying up to management!