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The Education Library is available to all SEIU nurses (RNs & LVNs) in California. It is more than just an opportunity to get free CEUs for your license renewal. The information provided is vital for safe nursing practice, protections that you have at work that include health & safety and workers’ rights. These are courses that will you not find anywhere else The new explainer film has been posted for our Education Library. This video explains how the new mobile app (Apple download & Google Play download) works by allowing nurses to gain access not only to CEU courses but also discussion forums and a social wall so that SEIU union nurses can connect to each other from across the state. Take a look at the explainer film and discover for yourself just how convenient this new app is. Regular updates will be sent out to nurses who subscribe here. Just click on the registration link, fill it out and then you’ll receive an email with a personal invite to join us. Every SEIU nurse member who registers will create their own account (with username and password) and be able to take any of our offered courses. Because the courses are pre-recorded and available any time, nurses can take our courses at their convenience. (That means even night shift nurses can join us!)
These free CEU courses are presented by the Nurse Alliance of SEIU California and open to all SEIU licensed nurse members. Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing – CA Provider Number 3413.
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This is a three minute piece that was produced about a week ago for December 1st World AIDS Day. Mary Magee, SEIU 1021 retiree sent the journalist to me.
By very sad coincidence, on World AIDS Day, the first known case of the Omicron variant of COVID 19 in the U.S. was discovered in San Francisco. This variant appears to be even more contagious than the Delta variant and was bravely announced by scientists in South Africa. South Africa has suffered preventable deaths from HIV/AIDS because U.S. drug companies refused to allow South Africa to produce generics. Some scientists think that the mutation of COVID 19 may have occurred among people infected with HIV whose immune systems could not eliminate the virus from their system. At the same time, Moderna tested their COVID 19 vaccine in South Africa but then failed to supply the country with it.
Please join me in demanding that South Africans (and ALL people) have access to COVID 19 vaccines and HIV/AIDS treatment. As the old slogan goes: Silence=Death.
Sasha Cuttler RN PhD
RN Chair
SEIU Local 1021
P.S. Get your COVID 19 vaccine booster and flu shot: It’s NOT too late.
“Hate has no Place in Healthcare!”
Nurses & healthcare workers decry cruel Federal rule that would
jeopardize patient safety for women, LGBTQI patients, and others
(San Francisco, CA) This morning, nurses, healthcare workers, and community allies spoke out to oppose a final rule change by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This rule change would destroy healthcare workers’ “duty to care” by allowing religious objections to care that will impact LGBTQI patients, women’s healthcare, and more.
A letter of support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is available here.
Members of the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, Committee of Interns and Residents (SEIU), SEIU Nurse Alliance of California, faith leaders including Rev. Claire Bohman and Fresh “Lev” White, and Chief of Staff Dan Bernal from Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco office all took part in this morning’s ceremony to speak out against the Trump administration’s discriminatory rule change.
Nurses and allies then symbolically chained themselves together with a string of paper hearts to represent their unity and commitment to caring for every patient and defending access to lifesaving care.
“Just as people with HIV were demonized in the 1980s, the federal government is again encouraging the unethical and inhumane treatment of patients and justifying it as ‘religious freedom.’ But healthcare providers, especially here in San Francisco, are committed to fighting for our patients and our profession,” said SEIU 1021 member Sasha Cuttler, a Registered Nurse at San Francisco General Hospital.
“Religiously observant healthcare workers learn, as the adults we are, how to navigate our choices of work, taking into account the realities of patient needs and own beliefs. It is incumbent on us to make job decisions that would never result in our denying a patient care. It is patients who need protections and a guarantee that they will be treated with dignity, and will have access to quality care, care as excellent and thorough as the next person. These inhumane rules from a Health (and supposedly) Human Services Department allow individual healthcare workers, as well as religiously based healthcare systems, to discriminate and withhold care,” said SEIU 1021 Mary Magee, RN.
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SEIU Local 1021 represents nearly 60,000 employees in local governments, non-profit agencies, health care programs and schools throughout Northern California, including 20,000 in San Francisco. SEIU 1021 represents more than half of all workers employed by the City and County of San Francisco; registered nurses and other healthcare workers at the city’s hospitals, clinics, and jails; court workers, and nonprofit workers who provide care and support to the city’s most vulnerable populations.
More and more nurses are reporting that they are clocking out
and then finishing the day’s work. They report feeling pressured by
their managers to clock out and forego the appropriate overtime
pay. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!
By clocking out and continuing to work:
• You are violating the hospital’s time-keeping policy and could
be disciplined. Employees can be terminated for inaccurate
time-keeping.
• You put yourself at risk if issues arise. You will have a hard time
explaining how you were clocked out but still providing
patient care. You might even face charges of fraud for charting while not on duty.
• The hospital’s liability insurance will not cover you if you are
working off the clock. This includes breaks and lunches!
There are many reasons you may not be able to complete work
before quitting time: lack of support staff on the unit, higher patient
acuity, increased patient needs and demands, and increasing
amount of required paper work.
At the end of your shift, chart all of the excellent care you provided to
your patients. If you are not going to complete your work on time then
notify the charge nurse. If you are the charge nurse, notify your
manager.
You should not be asked to jeopardize your professional and ethical
standards in order to provide care. And, you should be compensated
for all time worked.
If you feel pressured to clock out and then continue working,
contact your Union steward, Worksite Organizer or Union Representative right away.
