Nurses Fighting Public Health Cuts

Nurses Fighting Public Health Cuts

A group of Local 521 nurse members traveled to Sacramento in early May to work with the SEIU Nurse Alliance of California to identify and solve problems affecting nurses and to improve the environment of care, and thus, patient outcomes.

Our nurses also attended educational breakouts and spoke with their local legislators about the effect drastic budget cuts would have on their work with patients.

Local 521 members met with staff from the offices of: Assemblymember Juan Arambula, District 31; Senator Dean Florez, District 16; Senator Roy Ashburn, District 18; Senator Elaine Alquist, District 13; Assemblymember Sally Lieber, District 22; Assemblymember Joe Coto, District 23; and Assemblymember Anna Marie Caballero, District 28.

"We’re trying to convey to them that with these cuts, it’s not only affecting middle-class or low-income families. It affects everybody. When you cut funding to emergency rooms, to tuberculosis prevention programs, it impacts everybody." - Charisse Feldman, PHN Santa Clara County	"We told them not to balance the budget on the health of Californians." -Carmen Cruise, RN Kern Medical Center
"It starts with us, the preventive healthcare nurses. It's when we don't catch it that it goes to the hospital level and then long-term care." - Abigail Romo, PHN Kern County Dept. of Public Health	"I realize why it is so important to go in person to see the legislators. To many of the representatives, SEIU is just another lobbyist putting pressure on them to do or not do something. Each of the five representatives I spoke with thanked me for making the trip to see them. Now I see more of what SEIU does." - Terry Martin, PHN Santa Clara County

What’s Next for Local 521 Nurses?
The SEIU Nurse Alliance of California has begun the first-ever nurse-led, field-based study of how California's mandated staffing ratios are working. Kern Medical Center nurses will collect data about their shifts and report results for this statewide project beginning in June. The study is designed by Jean Ann Seago, Ph.D., RN, a UCSF research scientist, who will be the lead researcher on the study.
Fill out the survey now:

Nursing Alliance Staffing Survey

And, we need nurses to sign up for the next Sacramento nurse lobby day on June 11. Nurses will tell our lawmakers how budget cuts directly affect their ability to serve their patients and community.

Call Ernest Harris in Kern County at (661) 321-4160, or Maki Matsumura in Santa Clara County at (408) 678-3337, if you are interested in participating in either of these important actions.

Download the flyer:

Nurses Together to Fight Pub Health Cuts

Web page for nurses: more information on what SEIU is doing for nurses, locally and state-wide.