 So, hi everyone, welcome thanks for coming out on a, you know, Friday evening late afternoon depending on where you are. We figured we'd try something a little bit different, since many people are stuck inside at these times anyway. So, my name is Joe to manual hall, I am an organizer and educator with labor notes based in Brooklyn, New York. Many of you are probably already familiar with labor notes but I'll give the little backstory in case you aren't labor notes is a multimedia education project focused on trying to help build and facilitate and foster and coordinate a militant wing of the labor movement of getting people from one another about struggles that they've been involved in things that they're taking on. And so we put out a monthly magazine and have been doing so for 40 years, we publish a lot of news material on our website. And we also host educational events both ones like these that are panels but we also do a lot of training and organizing training education and look forward to being able to do so in person with you all again. The big flagship event is every two years we do this big conference in Chicago just outside of Chicago to that brings together thousands of rank and file staff officers from unions around the country and around the world to learn from one another teach from one another and just network in a way that we think is really important. So, without further ado or talking from me. I'm going to get started with this and pass it off to the panelists, just a couple of quick housekeeping notes. If you have questions for the panelists that chat is going to be really difficult for me to follow doing all of these different things please use the q&a. It's great to have people introducing themselves in the chat and doing stuff like that. I'm leaving it open here because I trust you all have, you know, I'll shut it down if I need to just because I don't have the like where with all during all of this to actually moderate it. So, with all of that being said, we're going to keep it to try to keep it to within an hour to respect everybody's time. And, you know, I think that we'll have a lot of good discussion in that time. Without further ado, I want to pass it off first to our first panelist, Kristen Perez who is an RN and a unit steward with the Illinois Nurses Association at UIC hospital in Chicago, and who's going to tell us about a strike that she was involved in and then we're going to go to our next panelist and then we're going to keep going and have some back and forth discussion. So, Kristen, thanks so much for coming. Thanks Joe. I'm really happy to be here and talk to other people who are interested in labor action and furthering union causes, both in Chicago and across the country. The way I found out about, you know, being on this panel that I participate in a monthly group of people who are union members from different parts of the country and we talk about different labor and union issues where we are locally. And so I'm really glad to be able to have the same kind of discussion with a broader audience. At our, the strike that I participated in specifically just happened this past September. And it stemmed from an expired contract that expired in August of last year with a very contentious negotiation process with our hospital administrators, it was really going nowhere. And, you know, they just gave us no choice in the matter but to strike. We had a resounding strike vote that was, I want to say more than 99% of our membership voted to strike. And administration still did not take that as we were serious and we did have to go out on strike and we went out for seven days. The great thing about it is that the other labor union that exists within our hospital other than INA is SEIU and they are the overwhelming majority of union membership in our hospital. And they have over 5000 members, whereas INA is something like 1000 nurses. So the two unions together coordinated about strike dates, and we didn't go out on the same day but we went out each union within, I think INA went out on a Friday and SEIU followed us out on the following Monday. So there was upwards of five, 6000 people outside of the hospital who are usually inside the hospital working. And so those numbers outside the hospital really sent a message, not only to the administrators but to the public of what the issues were, and that it wasn't just something trivial. It was more than just nurses wanting a raise, which is what the hospital likes to, you know, portray it to be, but we were really fighting for really important safety issues, not only for nurses what in asking for appropriate and adequate PPE, but also asking for safe patient ratios to protect the people we take care of. There's no point in trying to save lives if we're doing a bad job of it. And so we were asking for a safe patient ratios we were asking for adequate PPE supply and we were asking for a nominal raise. We were asking for every main request. And so after the seven days we did go back in and the hospital did finally negotiating good faith with us and our executive board did a fantastic job negotiating on nurses behalf and anything that was questionable that they were offering they brought it to us and when we said no they said great, we're going to go back and fight for you. And my goodness they won, we won and it felt so good because there was 6000 of us outside saying like this is wrong this is not the situation workers should be working in. And the hospital just could not say no in the end. And so both unions went back in, we're able to negotiate fair contracts. And for the most part we achieved everything we asked for. But a huge thing and now you I see is the only hospital in the state that has something close to safe patient ratios. So that's a huge deal. Absolutely. Thank you Kristen and is super inspiring huge win and I already have some, some questions. But I'm going to I'm going to hold my tongue for now and we're going to come back in discussion, we'll get to it so I wanted to introduce. John Pearson, who is an ER nurse, and is the Alameda Health System chapter president for SEIU local 1021. And so, hit us go go with it and tell us about the your your actions. Okay. Great. Thank you. It's hard to follow what Kristen just told us about. And actually, it's really cool to be here with Kristen because Kristen you might not know it but you and your coworkers blaze the way for us, because our strike was about a month later. My coworkers and I were all following as much news as we could find about your strike. And a lot of ways there, there are similarities. We're also employees of a public hospital and clinic system that, you know, is run kind of with this, you know, basically kind of regime of austerity, like cutting public services. And multiple unions were involved as well in the fight and, you know, something that's kind of unusual in healthcare. It's at least it's not the norm is that nurses were together with other people that aren't nurses in the strike and the buildup. Just to give people context, I'm a nurse at a big public county hospital Highland hospital. And that's part of our county hospital system are our part of SEIU local 10 to one is called a hs chapter that's the name of our employer Alameda health system or hs. And it's basically like, you know, over, I think over 200 different job classifications pretty much everybody that works in the hospitals and clinics in our county, the public ones, everybody from, you know, clerical workers who answer and write things down to people that do complicated procedures like nurse anesthetists to food service workers, you know, it includes professional chefs and people that serve food and deliver it to patients to housekeeping workers trained to keep levels of infection down to, you know, of course nurses and nurses aides and hundreds of others. And 3,000 of us are strike and the buildup and the whole campaign also involved CNA, which is a union that's only our ends. And basically, you know, to try to give you the short version of it, just like probably many of you are familiar public services for decades have been cutting and cutting and cutting and handing over lots of the things that used to be only public services to the private sector. So what does that really mean it means like the county agreeing to get rid of public sector jobs that have the benefits and security and all that and just turn them over to private contractors. So our hospital system for example would take something like the dialysis department nurses that dialyze patients and all the support staff that goes into that, and just get rid lay off all those positions that have pensions benefits and job security, and union rights, and then just get a contract with a private sector company and bring in non union workers. That's just one facet of, you know, kind of the work environment that we're in. The other part of it is that our work day and the way that our patients get treated is is pretty horrible right the conditions that we're working in a really bad. So what does that mean for patients on the ground where I work in the ER that means that if you come in to see the doctor and have a real emergency that you know that you're very, very sick. You might end up waiting six, eight hours just to get in a bed and see the doc be seen by a doctor, even if you're really sick sometimes. When you're in that bed you might be stuck there with no windows lights on 24 hours a day constant noise for days at the time in the ER, no guaranteed meal service. Many of the things that the doctors taking care of you are ordering aren't done because we're not able to do them in an ER. And, you know, kind of on and on just like this. That's the conditions we're working under. So our employer at the beginning of bargaining back, you know, way over a year ago, when our contract before our contract expired in March of 2020. Basically went on a rampage trying to tear up the contract and rewrite large sections of the contract probably more than half of the whole contract. A real sort of scorched earth approach that we don't usually see in the public sector. So kind of union busting at the beginning of our campaign we sat down and figured out you know what do we want what are our members telling us on this contract survey that we did what they want. And then we realized that to get anything that our members wanted or to fix any of the problems, we were going to have to basically force the county to come in and remove the leadership and reverse this kind of privatizing direction. And to all of our surprise, we pulled it off, because we built up to what ended up being a strike in the middle of the pandemic, and force the county to come in get rid of our entire board of trustees, and a very dramatic public meeting. And the new trustees are now very busy pushing out the executives who've been doing all this to us. And so, you know, it's going to be a continued fight to finish our contract bargaining has totally turned around but we have to we have to close the contract. And it's good, it looks like it's going to be a fight to get the county to actually follow through on what they promise to do because the back peddling now. And that's kind of in a nutshell what we did. We want to strike the middle of the pandemic and got the got what was basically a privatizing public service to reverse and come back into the county. Apologize I covered up my unmute button with a different screen. So very inspiring great story and now I'm looking forward to digging in a little bit to both of the examples and if along the way either of you have questions that you want to ask each other please interrupt me because those are really cool too. So, Kristen I wanted to ask a little bit about you know john started to talk about the, the some of those structures that they had to build up some of the work that they did in the lead up to the strike. I want to talk a little bit about what that looked like in your unit and with your coworkers of trying to build up to support for the strike what were the conversations like what were the challenges to doing so. Yeah, I mean it wasn't hard to drum up support amongst the union members. We were all just have had enough. You know, our administrators are so heinously terrible to us in some ways, and the pandemic gave them a huge opportunity to correct some of those actions, and they totally took the opportunity to do the opposite. So, during the pandemic one floor was, you know designated as the COVID floor outside of the ICU and those nurses work so hard and every nurse in the hospital works so hard every staff person. It was really just doing everything they could in the name of helping people who were sick. Meanwhile, so many of us became sick, some in very serious and dire ways. And we had a total of, I believe four staff members who passed away to nurses and to non nurses during the pandemic due to COVID. And I want to say that generally, those, those staff members did not work in the COVID areas and did not generally have a lot of comorbidities. It was very shocking and very painful for our staff. And so on top of the bad behavior from our administrators before the pandemic, and then with the pandemic and being asked to reuse our PPE up to six times with an unknown sterilization process. We were very wearing those masks and receiving emails about how not enough of us are recycling and reusing our masks and and then just, you know, like the just the general disrespect from our administrators. It was easy to say, enough is enough. And it's, and it's time for us to say like we're going to go stand outside now. And by the time it came to the vote in August, administrators had done very little negotiating the kinds of things that they were asking to change in the contract. It was basically as if they had torn up the previous contract and started over and they were doing very ridiculous things, something like 150 hours or something like that of mandatory low census time and, you know, changing floating tracks and raises that are only based on patient outcomes that are actually impossible to get with the staffing that we had in the first place. And nurses were just tired, and, and every staff person in the hospital had had enough. And so we all, you know, on, on that Friday we walked out of that hospital and we stood outside for seven days as brothers and shouting at the top of our lungs and telling anyone who would listen, what we were asking for and why those things were important for not only, you know, to make the hospital a better place but to keep those patients that are inside safe. Because that's, that's why we all get up and go to work in that hospital every day anyway. And so what are we doing if we're not asking for the safety of those people, and in turn, gaining safety for ourselves as workers. So it was, you know, like the, the 6000 people standing outside shouting and telling the administrators what a terrible job they've done was really powerful and a lot of people, it seemed like stood up and listened and there was so much support from outside. You know their teamsters stopped delivering to the, to the hospital and to the nearby construction site for which they're building our new surgery center. Other labor groups came and supported with people and signs every single day. Some of the nurses down the street from Cook County who are from National Nurses United came and visited every day. The teachers union members also came, and it was so great to have that visual and verbal support from them, because that those seven days were long, and sometimes it was raining and cold, but everyone's energy and passion for fighting is fair. And for what was safe for our patients was paramount and everyone stayed together and it just looked like such a strong, like massive movement outside the hospital and we even took it marching, you know, around the radius of the campus, down to the chancellor of the university's home, which is not a short walk. So they blocked, I want to say the bridge crossing Ashland going towards the chancellor's home. And it, you know, people in the city had to say like gosh why they, there must be something wrong going on if all these people are out here, doing this. In the end, both unions were successful in getting what we were asking for. And it was, you know, a historic ask because we got a commitment for the hiring of an additional 200 nurses in the hospital. And I think their deadline is this coming June. Once we have those additional staff, we will have a commitment for ratios that are actually safe in the hospital, where nurses can practice safely, and patients are going to have the best possible outcomes. Thank you. And, John, I wanted to ask you the same question about in in the build up to the strike how what did, what did that organizing look like, what were the challenges that you faced. How did you build out the networks and structures that you needed and what types of networks and structures did you need to be able to wage a successful strike. Yeah, we really kind of had to roll with the punches and come up with, you know, like with plans on the fly at times, especially because of the pandemic that really changed a lot of things for us. And in a few ways, I think it actually, I don't want to say it helped us because it gave us some huge challenges, you know, like for instance, I think it's much easier to have a strike when you can have more in person meetings. And so it was really hard to build up enthusiasm over zoom. So the preparation, I think a lot more went into it than it might have looked on the surface to a lot of our members and to the public. We started talking about a strike the possibility we might have to go on strike, and then potential need for a strike and then planning for how we might do it. Two years in advance. And the first thing that we did when we started saying, you know, like, look, we've got to consider all the tools that we have in our toolbox and the probably the strongest one that we might have to resort to, if things get really bad as a strike. And the way that we kind of like ended up planning this out, and you know it didn't go perfectly there were hiccups but we started by working on a contract survey. We kind of like crowdsourced from as many different crowds as we could at work questions and issues to put on a contract survey to see what our coworkers cared about. We had a goal of a percentage of how many surveys we were going to get back I think it was somewhere around like 70% of the membership. And they quite reached that goal but we got over half of our members surveyed I believe, and then that became the basis for what the bargaining team decided were their priorities. And one of the reasons that that was really helpful is that in the past our experience has been when bargaining teams come in cold. Most people in their normal lives, don't really have a sense of having to represent lots of other people. And that is a kind of unusual thing to have to do. And so if you're just kind of coming in cold, mostly you're just going to refer to like your circle of friends, and your own personal experience, and not what lots of people want, right and we're representing 3000 people, working in this big hospital system. And so that kind of set limits, you know, based on what the majority of our members really cared about wanted, and we're able to use it to justify what our priorities were in bargaining. And it also, I think that was actually even a secondary purpose the main purpose really was just to have the survey as a vehicle for having one on one conversations with lots of people. And so that kind of like started people thinking about talking about just being aware of the fact that like we're going to bargaining what does that mean for me and what's my role in it, even if I'm not somebody that's going to sit at the table. What are the possible outcomes, and then what role can I play to get, you know, what my coworkers and I might need or want. And I think that was one of the most helpful ways to think through every other part of the campaign is like what out of what we're planning what is the right vehicle to use to have lots of one on one conversations and get people engaged in a way that feels really connected to things that they care about to their own interests. And how do we tie that to things that we need to be fighting about that are about patient care. So after that happened, there were several other vehicles including things like you know giving bargaining updates, having the election for the bargaining team before that. And then in the ramp up to the actual strike as we're escalating. We had is right before the pandemic escalating actions at different campuses to put pressure on management, press conferences, then the pandemic hit we had more press conferences, because we got tons of media attention during the beginning of coven. And then, finally, a couple things like petitions to get buy in around the other county taking over and to put pressure on the county. And then we had a strike vote very dramatically and kind of out in the open very visibly so that management would see us see members like you know coming off of their floor and wearing purple and all putting a ballot in a box and you know a big sign that said strike vote. And so all those kinds of things really went into the buildup. And then, you know just to talk about some of the things that were challenging that we had to roll with the punches, like with coven. One of the hardest ones to deal with was the fact that we couldn't have in person meetings very easily. And so we ended up, you know, doing lots of work around having online meetings having conference calls, but also, you know, many of us are working together shoulder to shoulder every day no matter what because we start to take care of patients in the pandemic. And so, some of us would just go from floor to floor and talk to people and we just pull people into an open space stand as far away from each other as we could and just have quick and prompt to meetings or talk one on one. And that very methodically and kept a list of all of our members and made sure that we've had multiple one on one conversations with everybody by the point we got to talking about strike. Thank you both. So, one set of questions that have gotten a couple questions about, and that you've both mentioned in different ways. And both of the strikes that you were involved in involves more than one union striking at the same time striking together in workplaces that are represented by multiple unions. What was, you know, either of you wants to speak up to this first and hope that both of you will. What was the, the role of that how important was that to the strike and how what sort of takeaways did you have from it challenges about making that work promise for future work, things like that. I can take that so. You know, the fact that we have the two unions within the hospital and one union represents such a large majority of the staff, and that both of both unions chose to go out on strike at essentially the same time. You know, it really showed that unanimously across the hospital, every single staff member was unhappy and felt that we were being treated unfairly, and we were. And so the fact that 6000 people are like hey, this is not cool. And we need to stand up for this and walk out of our jobs was a huge message to not only our administrators but and the state because it is a state run facility and we had so much support from outside unions who came to speak up on our behalf and other political figures who came to speak up on our behalf and say like hey these people are not asking for something crazy. What they're asking for is something that will benefit the patients and that's like the most important thing. The fact that not only strategically but symbolically as the IU walked out of their jobs with along with the INA was so powerful and showed so much solidarity and strength between the two unions and so much commitment because it wasn't easy and this was the first time that the nurses have walked out in an actual strike since the inception of INA at at UIH and so I want to say that's something like 47 years. So that it was the very first actual strike in since its inception, and in the past they had always been able to resolve whatever contract issues there were before having to actually read, you know, actually walk out and this was the first time and so many nurses were like, oh my God, what are we really going to go on strike like what is it going to look like, no one had any experience in that. But everyone just put their bravest foot forward and stood up for what was right instead of what was easy. It was easy to just give in to whatever the hospital administrators demands were, and it was it was tough to stand outside and like, make yourself a target to administrators as well. And the fact that resoundingly in, you know, the, you know, every every member of each union really did that and there was so much more safety and strength in our numbers because of that. And just the fact that Teamsters and all the other unions in the city came to stand beside us, or took action along with us to help our cause really made it made it an obvious choice that it eventually administrators had to give in. And to do our fair share share of appealing to media and to, to the governor himself as he does sit on the board of our hospital. And, and to the, you know, we tried to go above, you know, even just the CMO of our hospital and go up to the union chancellor and, and whatnot to ask for these things because we weren't asking for something crazy. And we just wanted to get what was fair and due to our members who work so hard and sacrifice so much during the pandemic. So that solidarity was meant everything, even in just giving everyone motivation to keep showing up and keep standing up and keep shouting at the top of our lungs even though you had no voice anymore. And, and honestly we had a great time. It was a fun time. And I never felt more supported or and more close to my fellow union members, and not just other nurses but just everyone in the hospital. I'm a float nurse in the hospital and so I go to all the inpatient non ICU units. And so I know quite a, you know, like I'm a familiar face to a lot of people and so it was great to just like spend time outside the hospital with them and build our relationships and support each other and like, I already know that you can count on those people inside the hospital, but then you learn that you can count on them outside the hospital to, and it felt so good. And it, and it just made it that much easier to take the risk and to lose the seven days worth of pay, and like I could care less, because everything we built together, and knowing that we could be successful, and then feel like if it were to come to this in the future to know that we could be successful at all times. It was great. Yeah, john I'm interested to hear from you as well about the, the multiple union dynamic, and any, you know, the promise and challenges of it if there were any. Yeah, so we had pretty centrally involved in our campaign and strike California Nurses Association they have some of the RNs. Not the majority of our ends those are those are myself and my coworkers but at two of our hospitals they represent some of the RNs a few hundred. And they were, you know, we basically did a lot of coalition work with them, not around the bargaining so much. They basically got stuck in the same kind of position with the employer and bargaining but took a slightly different path to fight it. But we did a lot of coalition work around the county taking over and just kind of like pushing back really hard at the scorched earth bargaining approach. And we coordinated our strike dates and our strike votes, and we're able to work pretty closely with them around, you know, picket lines and many of the escalating events like rallies and press conferences that we had in the build up. And then, you know, the Labor Council was extremely helpful we got the Labor Council, you know we get kept giving them updates as the campaign was progressing in the build up to strike to get some buy in. And then we got sanction from them and the secretary treasure of the Labor Council basically was like our kind of liaison or facilitator when we would meet with the politicians like county supervisors, who we're putting pressure on to take over or to intervene. And that was that's been extremely helpful, they've continued to play that role, as we're trying to finish up bargaining. And as we're also meeting with these new trustees like to put pressure on them to be accountable. And there were some really wonderful moments during the strike where we got great support, you know, like memorable things were that we found out that the garbage truck drivers that pick up possible garbage or Teamsters. And you know somebody is like somebody's spouse was one of those drivers, and they got the word out to their union leadership and told us at the very last minute they're going to refuse to cross our picket lines and not pick up the hospital garbage. And so there are these great moments where you know you have like a garbage truck driving up seeing a picket line hockey their horn and then driving away. There's one truck driver I guess who got upset, cross the picket line and then got sent back as a penalty by his fellow union members to walk the picket line with us as a penance. That was really cool. One of the Teamsters locals also sent a giant Teamsters semi truck to like do circles around our biggest hospital and blast the air horn over and over. That was pretty cool. We had so many other union send crowds of people in support and to be on the picket line with us fight for 15 workers that was really cool. A group of women who have been involved in lots of fight for 15 action over the years came. There was this great interaction where they said, how are you guys feeling. And, and I said, gosh, you know, like a lot of us haven't done this before we're really scared. But I, you know, like, and I was just thinking in my head, they're not in a union and that's the fight for 15 campaign. They're way more vulnerable than we are we already have a union, like you know, they probably would be even more scared to go on strike and they were like, yeah, you don't need to be scared we've been in lots of strikes, and you should also consider marching to Sacramento for your demands. And we were like, oh, you're way more hardcore that we are. So yeah, there were lots of great moments I think of cross union collaboration and solidarity. That's fantastic. Thank you both. There we've gotten a few questions and I'm interested myself in the, the community support and public response aspects of how if you were able to build what you think was an effective community support in the strike. What were some of the things that went into that and maybe some of the lessons to take away from that and then also just sort of generally, what was the, the public response and the public perception of the strike. I think we used a lot of different tactics to reach out to the public and garner support for for the strike, you know, prior to the INA coordinated a candlelight vigil for those staff members that we lost to coven in front of the hospital to just bring awareness to the, to the plight that we were going through at the time and currently and and there was plenty of news coverage there. During, you know, during the strike, again, like lots of news stations came and not only did they talk to eboard members who represent us so well and have all the right things to say when it comes to the media but they also talked to the rank and file members, including, you know, those who who represent our black and brown communities who are a majority of the staff in our hospital. And, you know, like asking nurses who speak Spanish to represent the group and talk, you know, to the Spanish language networks and asking, you know, nurses from both inpatient and outpatient perspectives what are they going through and why did they choose to strike. And I remember being, you know, well versed in what we were asking for and ready and willing to speak to any news outlet, anyone who stopped them to, to give their perspective. So I saw, you know, that happen over and over to independent news sources and papers and, you know, the public networks that that were coming to give us press coverage and you would see the same repeat networks over and over covering us each day. And then the political support that we had on each rally day, most notably Jesse Jackson, who came and marched with us and actually, you know, like held hands with our INA president and walked, you know, the perimeter of the campus, marching with us. And Chewie Garcia, several other state representatives, other representatives who were previously sponsoring our safe patient limits bill that did not pass last session, but will hopefully be reintroduced or will be reintroduced in coming up this session and hopefully with more success to garner safe patient ratios, not only in our hospital but for the entire state of Illinois, which would be, you know, like California level amazing. And just using every opportunity to give our, our version of what was going on and what we were going through and why we were asking for those things that were so not out of this world they were completely reasonable things and backed by evidence, you know, safe patient ratios and, you know, and staffing limits are are totally supported by evidence. And there was a huge study that was that came out even in some time around the time of the strike that you know really supported what we were asking for and so like people could see the logic and the science behind what we were asking for, not just that nurses are tired and don't want to, you know, help you to the bathroom. That's never the case. So, there was so so many angles from which we could show like from our human angle from an evidence based angle. And from a solidarity angle, you know, some of the SCI you members, even though Cook County has a $13 minimum wage we're not even receiving the Cook County minimum wage because the hospital claimed it was a state hospital and was not was exempt from that. And so winning the $15 minimum wage for SCI you members was a huge thing. And, you know, like if I don't, if my, you know, compatriots in SCI you don't win then I don't win either because if they're working in an unsafe and unfair environment, then it's it's only a matter of time before it's unsafe for me. And so it was so great to see their success. You know, like, people needed a fair wage, and especially with a majority black and brown membership, like it's, you know, racism is a health care crisis. And so we wanted to show to the public and, you know, set an example that like at UIC, we care about those things and we're not going to let anyone get away with that whether the governor is on the board or not. And it seemed like based on, you know, all those things combined, they just couldn't say no in the end. Thank you so much. I wanted to, again, ask you the same question this about communities for how did you build it. How important was it and what sort of was the public response, if you could articulate what it was. And something that we struggled with at the beginning because we were using as an example for, you know, how do we carry out a successful strike lots of the teacher strikes. And I think, you know, a key difference that we realize quickly is that teachers, you know, have kind of a ready made constituency of public groups right so like in elementary schools you have your parent teacher associations or groups, whatever they're called. And then in the high schools we saw lots of groups of high school students who are, you know, together all day in class or, you know, socializing after school, supporting the teachers and the teachers interacting with those groups, you know, to collaborate about demands or those groups kind of pushing the teachers. We don't have organized groups of patients like that, and many of the privacy rules that we have to work under really don't allow, you know, us to facilitate or even really talk about things that could help that happen. And so I think we, you know, we really struggled to build community support, some of the ways that it was facilitated were in some of the, you know, initial response to the pandemic. We had a huge surge of media interest and public interest and just what's happening inside of hospitals at the beginning of a pandemic. And we were able to use that, you know, to fight with the employer and public about providing safe conditions for patients and for workers, and to have kind of these fights similar to what Kristen was talking about over just providing us with the right equipment to do the job to be safe and to keep patients safe. And that sort of set the tone for the strike. And through that, there were people, you know, like my coworkers in the ER doing big fundraisers we collaborated with some doctors, and we put the hospital kind of in the hot seat about not providing some basic equipment that they were required to provide we fundraised and bought it on our own kind of to scold them and public about it, and to shame them and we got tons of interviews and lots of attention and raised money. And it's nice to help build like a strike relief fund, which our union has structure set up kind of like that but it's very clunky and hasn't been used I think in quite a while in a very effective way. And we wanted it to be kind of like, you know, ammo, so that people feel like they've got backup and security. And so we can kind of wave it in the face of the employer look how much money we've, you know, our members have raised we can go on strike as long as you want, you know, that sort of idea. We also had some organized groups helping us in our coalition we got tons of them signed on to support our demand to get the county to take over that helped us get more politicians to support that demand and sign on to our, you know, our letter asking the public to take over. So, those are just some of the ways. I think we also, you know, probably like lots of other people in healthcare, saw lots of public support in the form of like sending food and donations beginning of a pandemic. And we were able to use some of those connections to get people to come to the picket line or to organize groups of their friends family members or coworkers to come in and support us during the strike. I wanted to give either of you the opportunity to ask any questions that you have of one another. But now that you've heard a little bit more about what's been going on. I've got some questions at the ready to but I think that you might have some things to say. Yeah, I'm curious for Kristen what has changed in your workplace. Since everybody's had this experience of going through the strike. Yeah, I mean, slow is always changes always slow. But, you know, it's our duty as union members to make sure that it's at least steady. And so, you know, there's definitely some things that administration has done to delay the changes that they've agreed to, or, or sabotage. But our union membership is so vigilant and they, you know, really are great about reporting problems or delays or asking why hasn't this happened yet. And so there's quite a few people who are very brave to always speak up and question the administration on what they're doing. But most notably, I've seen that staffing ratios are improving as a floater in the hospital. I know what it's like on a lot of different units. And so I just mentioned to the charge nurse on one floor. And the other day I said, Wow, you know, usually I really hate coming here but it, this is much better than usual. And she said yeah they have been trying to staff us a little better. So, so there, there was some, it was palpable change for me anyway because it's usually horrible place to work on that floor. So it was like I could just feel a small shift. There's more to come because they have they still have 200 people to hire. And once we have those, you know those extra staff that's, we also had the, the administration also agreed to give control of deciding where those staff go, where they're needed to the nurse care committee which is run by our nurses and our rank and file union members. So the control is really in our hands of, of where those nurses go and where they're needed. So that, you know, it's, it's evenly distributed throughout the hospital both inpatient and outpatient sides, and you know throughout critical care med surge and surgical areas, as well as like Pete's and whatnot so the fact that the control still lies with us it's not just the administration going okay here's, here's 10 nurses and they're only all going to the transplant ICU, which is a high gross money making area for them. So, you know, it will be fair and and controlled by nurses so that everyone's happy with the outcome of the additional staff. So I think, yeah, there is definitely change, but slow. In fact, the administration is attempting to delay the contract raises that we've won for ourselves but of course you know and open mouth never or closed mouth never gets fed so everybody's mouth is open and at the very least these administrators are hearing in their sleep are constant complaints and emails and calls about where our money is. So it's coming. So, and we do have adequate PPE they've committed to the PPE, they send us a report of what is in stock, and what is at the level of par that they've agreed to. And so there's definitely accountability, because we're receiving that data from them, I think on a weekly basis. Great, that's really cool that your strike did all that. I think that's that's really admirable and awesome. And, and you should be, you should be feeling it to be feeling feeling it owning it. I like it. So, I'm your engine. Have you guys have not yet reached like a final agreement or are you guys just waiting on signatures for your contract. We're still bargaining. It's very frustrating. I, you know, I think for the majority of members right most of them are not directly engaged in the bargaining process at all. Most of them don't have somebody on the bargaining team that's right in their department that they can talk to. And so it's been frustrating for us because, you know, like you really want like you want people to have a sense. Of what they did had a big effect. There was a very dramatic, you know, very public change where the county had their board of supervisors meeting you know that the supervisors are the five elected officials that run the whole county, and ultimately fund and are responsible for the hospital system but have been kind of hands off for a long time. They put it into a separate kind of public entity called the public hospital authority, sort of semi privatized like to get around a lot of the regulations. And they had a very public meeting where they lined up all this hospital management like dozens and dozens of them, all to sing the praises of the current administration. And it was just, you know, a handful of union members, many of them like on a day off or like trying to get a break during work, listening through all this comment that was like the CEO is great I had lunch with him yesterday you know like I'm not exaggerating here I'm the parking lot contractor like I think the CEO is great and you know I'm the I supply the linens my people, you know like I hire 50 employees who supply the linen. And I think the administration is great it was like that kind of stuff. They overplayed their hand so much that, you know, became obvious to everyone listening and the county supervisors like geez, you know, we've got to do something. And the strike basically pushed them to have to take public action in this really dramatic meeting. And that I think members felt and then also seeing all these executives resigned one after the other or get fired has made a big difference. The actual conditions of people's work hasn't changed that much. And that's I think you know where it's really painful to, to watch and to have to be patient and wait for bargaining to be done. The tone and tenor of bargaining has completely and utterly changed right so before the strike we went from complete standstill for basically a year of bargaining. You know, kind of like management saying we want to rewrite, we're planning we're going to rewrite a bunch of your contract they're even declaring things like we're going to start charging you in January for health insurance. You know we're not even bargaining about that we're just going to do it. All kinds of wild stuff. We went from that to we had the strike and all of a sudden they got rid of their bargaining team replaced them with different people who have this long standing reputation the county for making labor piece. And so now it's kind of like you know we're we're talking to a very kindly grandfather who's in his 80s who like what really wants to know what we care about and we're rapidly settling all of our issues. They're dropping their takeaways rapidly and we're down to probably like our last dozen proposals. So we're coming to a close, but it's frustrating that it hasn't fully happened. Yeah I know that felt really frustrating for us during the strike when we were still hearing the asinine requests of our administration sometimes. I know that that's got to be feel so vindicating that they have completely switched around their negotiating members and have finally started to listen to your needs. So I hope you guys are, you know, get everything you want and don't let them sneak anything in. And I think it's really worth repeating to our coworkers that, you know, like what we all did right like what 3000 of us or 6000 your case did is not anything that really any other person or group could have accomplished like there's no, there's no way that here in Northern California there's some politician who was about to like do all this right there's no way. And there's there's just nobody else that would have done this except for all of us that work there. And we literally accomplished it like we have. Now we have nurses on the board of trustees that runs a hospital that are our union members, like that's crazy we didn't have anybody like that before. It's a big transformation. You all ask the good questions. Thank you so much. Yeah, so with an eye to time and just wanting to sort of bring us to a close out and wrapping up I wanted to, to ask for both of you, like what are the, the biggest challenges and promises that you see ahead. Where you work you've both mentioned some of these things. But if you could summarize some of your thoughts about, you know, over the next six months to a year both directly where you work and maybe more broadly if you'd like things that you're concerned about within health care. What are the things that you're paying attention to feeling optimistic about or think that we're going to have to fight about. I definitely think that in our immediate future, you know, it's unions who are going to be standing up for the everyday person. And, you know, without, you know, setting the example of, you know, like joining forces. Fighting, you know, the guy upstairs or whatever and and really just speaking up for the underdogs. You know, like that's a constant need and we can never not be doing that. Like it needs to be all the time. Even when you're tired, even when you need an app, even when you have a headache like that's, you know, even when you're tired of hearing yourself talk about union action and and participating in, you know, like fighting for what's fair for everybody. You just have to constantly do it and just be so dedicated and, you know, like if, if one person sees that you're not giving up then maybe they won't either. And so might make them feel like they can be the union loudmouth that they need to be, you know, and just expand exponentially. And everyone can do that together or support each other when, when they're too tired and pick up the torch and and keep going with what someone else was doing at our hospital immediately like definitely we always have to keep an eye on the administration that we're working with. That's through like, we have a process where we fill out forms like assignment despite objection to document inappropriate and unsafe happenings on the units and filing grievances. So every member is include is encouraged to like actually read the contract know what is in the contract so that when there are violations they can be documented and and fought against all the time. So, you know, our union is great about educating us on what to do when there are contract violations and how to proceed with them and then they fight like bulldogs to against those things and file the grievances. And they went all the time. So, even though it's like a slow process or an arduous process like they just keep going. And so if the membership does that too then you know like there's the worst they can say is no and there's no change and then you're just in the same place. But the best that can happen is that everything can totally turn around. As far as like in the future and more broadly like, gosh, once they start getting these vaccines out won't it be so nice. Like now that we have an administrator at the very top who's like, Yeah, I believe in this. Even my roommate who you may have seen passing back and forth is a grocery store worker and she has been trying and trying and trying to get an appointment for the vaccine and even looking at driving hours away to try to get one finally was able to schedule hers. It's going to be a year this month. So, you know, like that, that safety of people being vaccinated and and people who are in charge listening to science and following safety protocols is going to be a huge thing and then it just opens up the door for more union action because it'll be safe to do it again. So like there's the sky's the limit, while we have the person we have so like we got to just keep going and do everything as much as possible. Cool. I can, I can answer that too I think, like in the workplace. What we have to look forward to is, is that we now have, you know, almost every single coworker has gone through this experience of going on strike. We had a lot of fears that people had that we had to address beforehand. You know, we learned effective ways to do that. But a lot of the fears that they have have basically melted the way and disappeared right we had like, you know, people going around just basically saying the sky is falling. If you go on strike we're all getting fired that sort of thing. And we had to remind people like hey the that benefits the boss if we all go around saying that and of course they want us saying that right. And it's just not true. Now everybody's got the experience we all did it. Nobody got fired. And we made a huge change that no one else could have made. So that's something that we have to look forward to what we have to guard against and be, you know, wary of that we see little bits of is people falling back into the same patterns from before the strike, where they think the union is like this outside entity like an insurance company that you pay to take care of your problems which is just not true or realistic. And, you know, and that they don't have any, any role to play in fixing problems in their own workplace or fixing things for patients or for themselves and their coworkers. And I think that's part of what we have to guard against. We have this, you know, crop of people that kind of popped up during the strike that we saw organizing their coworkers bringing people out to the picket line or doing interesting things to get people together like you know there are a couple people I can think of who were always the one holding the dance party down on the corner all day, right and they got people other people to participate. And now we need to be thinking about like hey you know, should we see if they're interested in a leadership role or being a steward, and how can we mentor them and encourage that. Are there, you know, are there whole departments that have been kind of missing and all this that we can now bring in. And I think that was real big learning experience for us too is people that cross the picket line like how do we approach them. Do we shame them and ostracize them or do we see them as potential people to join us next time if we have to do it again. And I think all that's been a growing experience for us, kind of on the macro level I'd say that, you know, industry wide what's going on is that in the public and private sectors budgets are being cut, which is really crazy What do you think in terms of like just on a human level what's happening is millions of people are dying. And we're cutting healthcare budgets, and that makes no sense that means less healthcare workers less capacity to respond to millions of people dying. And so, you know that's something that we're going to have uphill battle to fight, because we're fighting, you know, huge amounts of money and power that we don't all have. But at the same time, I think the potential for us to fight back is much bigger because there's, I think, better public understanding of the need for health care. I think it's closer to most people's kind of like hearts and heads and wallets and maybe families and friends they know that have died or been sick with coven that if we're having a fight about you know, like, hire more nurses or surgical clerks, people can understand maybe oh yeah I remember like you know grandma had to wait a long time, because there weren't enough nurses. So I think that you know it's kind of like it's both good and bad for us that that this is happening like as far as our potential to organize and get the public on our side. I think that's very helpful and also, you know, I think it's important to be level headed about the challenges ahead of us but also about the terrain on which we're fighting and that fights help us fight better the next time and be stronger for the next So I really just want to extend my like the real depth of gratitude to both of you to come out and talking tonight because I think it's been really amazing and I've really enjoyed this conversation. A third panelist was unable to join us tonight. Michelle from nice because she wasn't feeling well, not coven related just wasn't feeling up to it. But conversations like these I think are so important and making connections like these are so important just a couple quick plugs. I'm in a follow up email to everybody who registered to this I'm going to send. We have some labor notes articles about these particular struggles that I want to share if you want to keep doing reading about it. Plugging also that the labor notes website is a really great resource I think for learning more about other things that are going on in the labor movement but also finding organizing resources are books cover a lot of the type of stuff that we're talking about about building community support about the labor organization that I'm sure many of you who are attending this are already familiar with but always worth giving it a second look, and also, you know, if you're interested in continuing to think about these questions about organizing and building connections on organizing in healthcare. I would love to talk to you about it. My email which I will send in the follow up email is very simple it is Joe at labor notes.org. And I'm, we're always trying to think about how to deepen connections between unionists in different union sectors across across industries but also within industries. So, reach out we want to know what what fights you're up to we want to know what's going on with you we want to know how we can help and connect you to other people who have thought about similar questions. So, this has been fantastic it's been a great way for me to spend my Friday evening personally and I hope that you all have felt the same. I look forward to seeing you all at future ones. Really, again, John, Kristen just like so great talking with you and having you out and it's, it's really inspiring to be able to hear from you about this. Pleasure to be here and an honor to speak after Kristen and all the inspiration that that her strike gave our members. Thanks for saying that john. Thank you all for listening and, you know, like your support and solidarity could, you know, be the one thing that somebody else in a union who struggling needs to just keep fighting so like I really feel inspired by you john and what you guys are going through and from listening to my other compatriots who are also union members across the country and hearing about what they're doing. Also inspired me and gave me strength at the time that we were fighting so thank you so much and I was really honored to be asked to speak. Thank you. Beautiful ending. Thank you so much. Good night everyone. Have a great day. Take care. Stay safe. Bye.