The Hospital Systems Division is
comprised of the more than 400,000 health care
workers across the United States – including over
110,000 nurses – who are members of SEIU, the
nation's largest and fastest-growing health care
union.
We're working together in an effort to build a
National Health Care Union that will lead the fight
for higher health care standards such as:
Safe staffing and quality care.
Understaffing in our hospitals and other health
facilities drives down the quality of care and
drives health care workers away from the profession.
We are working to improve staffing levels, protect
quality care standards, and eliminate mandatory
overtime that puts patients at risk.
Better pay and working conditions.
At a time when nurses and other health care staff
are leaving their professions in droves because of
abysmal working conditions, we’re bargaining for
improvements in pay, benefits, working conditions,
and patient care decisions. We want to keep
passionate and skilled caregivers in our hospitals,
nursing homes, and other health care institutions in
order to provide the level of care Americans expect
and deserve.
A voice in health care policies.
Rather than leaving all the decisions about staffing
and patient care standards to hospital and nursing
home administrators, we’re coming together to
address key issues and concerns through negotiated
contracts, legislative and regulatory solutions, and
community outreach.
As the healthcare industry
continues to face cost-cutting
pressures, it will take time and a
combination of union contract
bargaining, consumer action, and
legislative measures to put patient
care concerns back on the right
track.
Unions
really can improve staffing and
workload situations and SEIU members
have negotiated a variety of ways to
address these issues. We work to:
-
Set minimum staffing
standards limiting how many
patients employees must care
for in a particular area on
a particular shift.
-
Create labor-management
committees through which
employees make joint
decisions with
administrators about
staffing guidelines.
-
Restrict mandatory overtime
to protect employees and
ensure the highest quality
patient care.
-
Create guidelines for
floating and other practices
to ensure that employees are
able to provide the best
possible care to their
patients, and to do so under
conditions for which they
were properly trained.
-
Improve recruitment and
retention programs that
focus on benefits, salaries,
patient care, and working
conditions in order to
attract and retain the best
qualified staff.
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