Will you sign onto the Healthcare Workers’ Pandemic Bill of Rights?
Healthcare workers are at the frontline of this pandemic and in order to fight coronavirus, our safety is necessary. Healthcare workers are calling on our respective state governments to guarantee a standard Pandemic Bill of Rights that will protect all of us during this pandemic.
Governor Walz of MN, Burgum of ND, Evers of WI, and Reynolds of IA we are calling on you to protect us by implementing these guarantees so we can protect the people of our community.
Healthcare Workers’ Pandemic Bill of Rights
- Safe working conditions, especially proper Personal Protective Equipment that is immediately available when needed.
- Protections for our families, including on-site showers, hospital issued scrubs, and temporary housing so we avoid infecting vulnerable family members.
- Protections if we get hurt at work, including paid leaves for those of us who contract the virus and workers’ comp.
- Complete transparency. We are risking our lives. It is vital we know the situations we are walking into and who is making decisions about our lives. Hospitals and the state must be transparent about remaining numbers of PPE, numbers of workers infected, and other information that affects our safety.
- Employers must take every effort to slow the spread of infection, including no mixed assignments, adequate isolation rooms, limited visitor policies, universal PPE usage, and engineering controls.
- Protections for vulnerable staff, including the ability for frontline staff to be granted work accommodations if they are within a high-risk population to avoid exposure.
- Adequate staffing and education to safely protect patients and ourselves, including upstaffing units with COVID+ and COVID rule out patients as well as orientation rather than furloughs to prepare all healthcare workers to be prepared for any possible surge of COVID+ patients.
- A real voice in all matters relating to our patients, safety, and livelihoods. Where we are unionized, employers must include Union frontline leaders in decision making command centers. In non-union workplaces, we demand that frontline staff are brought into the decision-making process.
- Hospitals and the State must work cooperatively to get ahead of this fight by taking extreme measures. Given a critical shortage of equipment we are calling on the State to take extreme measures to advance manufacturing of necessary equipment and to instruct all healthcare providers statewide to share equipment and information with each other and their frontline staff to ensure that resources are available where needed. Testing must also be accessible and free to all.
- Statewide measures to stop the spread. To ensure public health, we are calling on the State to implement measures that allow people to stay home and avoid overloading the healthcare system including a hold on payments including rent, mortgage, and utilities.