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NNU Candles were used to represent the nurses who have died from COVID-19. |
On the same day that nurses across the U.S. were rallying for safer working conditions, the U.S. Supreme Court was approving President Biden's mandate for all workers in health care facilities be vaccinated.
The largest union of registered nurses, the National Nurses United, Thursday welcomed the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Biden administration’s authority to issue a vaccine mandate for all workers in health care facilities. At the same time, the nurses were disappointed that the Court overruled similar federal safety measures for all employees.
“At a time when we’re closing in on 850,000 Americans having died in the worst global pandemic in a century, and when infections and hospitalizations are continuing to soar, it is the obligation of our public agencies to require and enforce essential public safety measures to protect the lives and health of all American workers,” said Filipino American RN Zenei Triunfo-Coretez, NNU President .
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| Nurses at Dignity Health in Santa Clara County, CA took park in a rally Thursday. |
“From the onset of the pandemic in the U.S. two years ago, nurses have demanded that federal and state officials direct health care employers in particular to implement a variety of infectious disease control protocols – especially as we have seen employers routinely ignore basic protections,” said Triunfo-Cortez.
“The result has been the deaths of more than 4,700 health care workers, including close to 500 RNs, and hospitals turned into sites of potential infection instead of healing, with patients being infected with Covid-19 after arriving in hospitals for other emergency care.”
“For that reason, we are gratified with today’s 5-4 court decision that, frankly, should have been unanimous, to support one important safety measure — vaccination for health care workers — which must be part of the total program of infectious disease containment measures NNU has long outlined,” she continued.
The court order, said Triunfo-Cortez, “should be a signal to the Department of Labor and Occupational Safety and Health Administration to take the next necessary step — extending the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) issued last June until adopting a permanent standard based on it for health care workplaces.”
Earlier this month, NNU, along with the AFL-CIO and four other unions representing nurses, petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for a permanent standard “aimed at protecting the life and health of millions of nurses and other frontline health care workers throughout the United States in grave danger from the deadly Covid-19 pandemic” and for retention of the ETS.
On Thursday, a national day of action organized by the NNU involved hundreds of RNs at dozens of hospitals staged informational picket lines, including a candlelight vigil held at Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.
NNU nurses emphasized that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has ripped away critical protections from health care workers and the public, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) weakening COVID-19 isolation guidelines and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announcing that it intends to withdraw critical COVID-19protections for health care workers — right when the Omicron variant is exploding across the country and hospitalizations are skyrocketing.
“OSHA is charged with ensuring that employers create and maintain safe workplaces, and this delay in issuing a permanent standard puts the lives of nurses and other health care workers, patients, and our communities, in jeopardy," said Bonnie Castillo, RN, NNU executive director.
"We have seen far too many of our fellow nurses die during this pandemic. As of today, we have recorded the deaths of 476 nurse deaths from Covid," said the Filipino American nurse.
"Going to work should not mean putting your life and the lives of your loved ones in danger. It is time for OSHA to issue a permanent standard and protect nurses and health care workers who are on the front lines working to save the lives of others.” —
At the same time, with today’s SCOTUS ruling, NNU condemned the argument of the 6-3 majority throwing out the vaccine mandate for other workplaces, especially the majority’s argument that the rampant spread of the infection in unsafe workplaces is not an “occupational hazard in most.”
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NNU Nurses in Maine took part in the NNU Day of Action. |
“That twisted logic ignores the disproportionate number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among tens of thousands of essential workers over the past two years, from infections that have been contracted on the job,” said Triunfo-Cortez. “And the pandemic is far from over, with the latest deadly surge still overwhelming hospitals.”
Over the past two weeks alone, according to a New York Times tracker, infections were up by 159 percent with 781,000 daily new cases on average, and over 1,800 people are still dying every day, a 51 percent increase over the two-week average.
An earlier study found that about a third of health care workers who died from COVID-19 were of Filipino descent, many of them initially recruited from Philippines.
“If the agencies created to protect worker safety are barred from doing so, we have no laws and no safety regulations in the nation at all,” Triunfo-Cortez added. “In the midst of this still-raging pandemic,” she concluded, “nurses fully agree with the words of AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler today, we will not beat this pandemic until we stop the spread of the pandemic at work.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd
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