Since the start of the pandemic (and really, before that), frontline health care workers have been rightfully lauded for the tireless work that they have done to keep the health care system from cratering in this country. This is no easy task, as we have seen the devastation that the pandemic has wrought among our communities, and especially within the health care field. In Southern California, the cost of living crisis has filtered into the workplace, with many health care workers finding themselves priced out of their neighborhoods due to rising costs and unchecked gentrification, their stagnant wages and dwindling access to health care benefits compounding an already untenable situation. More than 2,200 health care workers at Keck Medicine at the University of Southern California are fighting for improved working conditions and a chance to combat the cost of living crisis with a new contract. So far, they have been met with an aggressive management that is hellbent on freezing wages and striking some of the most important benefits that health care workers enjoy from the contract. Represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, or NUHW, these workers —medical technicians, respiratory therapists, licensed vocational nurses, housekeepers, and nursing assistants— have made clear their demands for improved working conditions at multiple USC health care facilities across Los Angeles, and we’ve brought on Francisco Cendejas and Noemi Aguirre, two worker-organizers at Keck Medicine, to talk about the ongoing contract negotiations.

Note: This episode was recorded on July 18, 2024. Negotiations with Keck-USC are still ongoing.

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Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Francisco Cendejas:

Hi, morning. I’m Francisco Cendejas, I’m the director of our hospital division for our union here in Southern California.

Noemi Aguirre:

Hi, good morning. I’m Noemi Aguirre. I work as respiratory therapist at Keck USC. Also, I do hold a position within the union as an executive board member, as well as a steward in my department.

Mel Buer:

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor-focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network. And please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends and family members. Leave positive reviews for the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to. And please support the work that we do with The Real News by going to therealnews.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.

Since the start of the pandemic and really before that, frontline healthcare workers have been rightfully lauded for the tireless work that they have done to keep the healthcare system from cratering in this country. This is no easy task as we have seen the devastation that the pandemic has wrought among our communities and especially within the healthcare field. In Southern California, the cost of living crisis is filtered into the workplace with many healthcare workers finding themselves priced out of their neighborhoods due to rising costs and unchecked gentrification, their stagnant wages and dwindling access to healthcare benefits compounding in already untenable situation. More than 2200 healthcare workers at Keck Medicine at the University of Southern California are fighting for improved working conditions in a chance to combat the cost of living crisis with a new contract.

So far, they have been met with an aggressive management that has hell-bent on freezing wages and striking some of the most important benefits that healthcare workers enjoy from their contract. Represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers or NUHW, these workers, medical technicians, respiratory therapists, licensed vocational nurses, housekeepers and nursing assistants among them have made clear their demands for improved working conditions at multiple USC health care facilities across Los Angeles. And we’ve got two worker organizers here today to discuss this important negotiation. To start off this conversation, I think it would be probably a good idea to give our listeners an idea of what your working conditions look like. What are the issues that you’re currently working through on a daily basis? What does your regular workday look like for you?

Noemi Aguirre:

Sure. Hi everybody. This is Noemi again from Respiratory. I’m a respiratory therapist here at Keck. I’ve been here since 2002, so it’s been a minute. Obviously, it’s changed a lot throughout the years, but ever since the pandemic a little bit more recently, my workday consists of, well, any of a million things because respiratory therapists, they come in and they basically get assigned to go to different ICUs or areas in the hospital. I specifically will go to a specialty area today, for example, I would go to the bronchoscopy suite and we will have had scheduled outpatient visits for procedures. Usually, it’s every two hours. They’re spaced by two hours, so sometimes it’s 7:00, 9:00, 11:00, 1:00, 3:00. This is a lab that’s been growing in the last two and a half years because of COVID it was interrupted, so we had started growing the lab and then COVID came.

Because interventional pulmonology is a growing field, it’s a bit of a hit or miss for us in terms of how we’re doing these bronchoscopies and what the physicians are expecting. But basically we are going nonstop, so we don’t have any particular lunch that’s pre-planned, we just are winging it. It’s starting to lose its luster because in the beginning it was like, “Don’t worry. Once this becomes a well-oiled machine, so to speak, like cath lab or something, then everything will be… It is going to fall into place.” But two and a half years later, we’re still waiting to fall into place and we haven’t fallen into place. What we’ve fallen into is losing a lot of therapists to other facilities that pay better and do a lot less work. And who wouldn’t want to get paid more money to do a lot less work? And this being a specialty hospital, they just think that using their name is a laurel that they’ve been resting on for way too long that people are going to be working in their place because it’s such a great name, “I want to be associated with it.”

But after quite some time and a lot of changes in leadership, it doesn’t seem to change much. I’ll have an eight o’clock case, a 10 o’clock case, we set up, we assist in the procedure, we break everything down. We do an initial wipe down before EVS comes in and the housekeeping cleans the room, sterilizes it. And then we take all the samples that we took, whether it’s a biopsy or any kind of washings, and then we get those samples together. We label them all, we log them all in. We take them to their perspective areas, whether it’s pathology, cytology, microbiology. And then after we do that, we come back, we set up for the next case. A lot of times we are by ourselves sometimes on Mondays and Wednesdays when it’s busier, we do have two therapists, but it just barely hits the minimum at the moment as to, we’re not even thinking about lunch until you start to feel hungry.

And then it’s like, “Hey, when are we going to take a break?” We do have staffing issues. We do have issues with when we’re going to sign our breaks and we’re trying to keep up with what is interventional pulmonology out in other facilities like UCLA and other places that have it a little bit more down pat but we’re still waiting. And it doesn’t help that we’re in the middle of negotiations. I also am part of the bargaining team, and it doesn’t help to have their reactions or the looks on their faces when you’re asking for just basic stuff, which is more money because of the inflation you mentioned and also to have a better structured department, and they just look at you like, “Why haven’t you done this for yourself?” Well, here we are.

Mel Buer:

Francisco, I did want to really dive in here and really talk about one of the bigger issues that… Let me give you some context. My mom is a retired OR surgical nurse who throughout my entire life really had something to say about staffing issues at these hospitals that she worked at. And I really do believe, and I’m sure you agree, that when you have a staffing shortage or when you have workers who are putting in extreme hours handling caseloads that are way above normal, that what it translates to is a reduction in the quality of patient care.

When you’re talking about wanting to improve the working conditions for the workers in these hospitals through better pay, because yes, I got some information about starting wages for some of the workers in your unit and way too low for the speciality that they’re doing. But also really just this draw attention to, skeleton crews mean the work is not… You’re not being given the time to be able to really spend that time that you need with patients to be able to take care of these cases on a case by case basis in a way that provides high quality care. Would you agree that when you have these better working conditions and better staffing, that you really do have a better quality of care for the people who come through your hospitals?

Francisco Cendejas:

I think that it’s obvious, and it’s clear that that’s true. The rate of burnout of healthcare workers starting with the pandemic, even after the pandemic has just been, it’s unmatched. It’s never been as bad as now. And so knowing that is the case and the employer, Keck Medicine of USC having literally over 100 open positions at any given moment knows that what is being offered now knows that what’s on the table currently isn’t sufficient and is having the effect of just increasing the workload for so many other people, and it’s driving them out of the industry as well. And it’s just this vicious cycle.

Now, Keck is also, Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center are two highly specialized hospitals that do pride themselves in the specialties that they operate in and the quality of care there. But how is it able to be maintained as long as we’ve got this persistent, almost structural staffing crisis? This is why we make the proposals that we do. This has got to be fixed, and it doesn’t require individual efforts. It means that we need to have a contract that actually builds in fair wages, better control over workloads, guarantees that people have a reason to stay at their-

Francisco Cendejas:

… owns, guarantees that people have a reason to stay at this hospital for the length of their career. If the company’s not willing to agree to that, then they’re saying that they’re not willing to agree to having stability in their staffing, which is so necessary for the quality of care that patients do deserve.

Mel Buer:

Noemi, you had mentioned too, it’s not enough to be able to see that you’re at this illustrious hospital. The name is not enough to keep you around. The reputation of the name is that this is a hospital that has presented high quality of care, that is highly specialized in providing life-giving cancer care, right? Things of that nature. But for an employee there, eventually you start to look somewhere else, especially when a university like the University of California and UCLA’s Healthcare Centers offer 10 to 19% more in starting wages based on specialty, right?

The question that I want to ask then is throughout these negotiations and the proposals that you’ve brought to the table, not only are you talking about retention of the talent that you have and being able to keep people fed and keep them feeling like they are being respected and wanted in the workplace, but also trying to attract new talent that can help kind of shore up these staffing shortages. As of right now, it doesn’t seem like the reputation of Keck is that it’s a good place to work. Does that seem accurate?

Noemi Aguirre:

I mean, I think so. I’ve seen it with the new hires. We have a lead who’s like, “Hey, my wife just got hired at Kaiser, 10 bucks above me, and I’m a lead here. I’m the leading supervisor of the shift with a nighttime differential.” So we all laughed actually as we presented that across the table. But it’s one more thing that’s laughable almost about a place like this because you see their mottos, that’s the one that kills me, right? And for some reason in my mind, they have these mottos that are ever-changing, right? Like, “Exceptional, beyond exceptional care.” And you’re just like, “Okay.” And then, “Now, we’re limitless.” And it’s not that you don’t feel that your work is good work, right? It’s just that they’re seeing themselves in a way that makes you laugh because you know how quickly you did something that you should have taken a little bit more time with, right?

And it just, in my own mind, when I look at those things and I laugh inside, it just reminds me of Enron. When they used to ask associates like, “Well, you saw this all going down, didn’t you?” “Yeah.” Well, they’ve got all these mottos that sound like, “Beyond exceptional, limitless.” And so now it’s so extremely out there that it’s almost a running joke. When we’re going to start to do something and, “Oh, I’m missing this. I couldn’t start.” “Well, we’re limitless.” That’s why we run out of this. Or when we had supply issues, right? We had all these supply chain issues during COVID, of course, that’s no fault to the university, but then you start to hear these whispers that they’re just hoarding this stuff, should something else happen, but they don’t want to use it. And you’re just like, “How much stuff can you store when you need it now?” And you’re just like, we look at each other and we go, “Well, we are limitless.”

And so then when you’re working, and it’s a little bit sad too, because I don’t want to work in an organization where I’m almost like, “I feel like it’s a bit of a running joke.” But it’s a running joke to the workers because we’re here, right? It shouldn’t be good if I’m an administrator to hear that someone’s like, “Hey, our new model is limitless.” We’re like, “Yeah, limitless ability to be short on this, limitless short staffing, limitless low pay.” And so your own motto for your own company is the joke to your workers. It’s like, “Come on, dude.” It’s like, “It sucks.”

Mel Buer:

Yeah, yeah. Let it be known to all our listeners that you don’t give a shit about your job, right? You care very much, right? And you wouldn’t be asking for these things at the bargaining table if you didn’t care about what’s going on at the hospitals that you work.

Noemi Aguirre:

And we’re still going and getting the education. I, for one, before I came here, I didn’t have these little interventional pulmonology, one more year, get a certificate, just to assist. We have people that are actually really engaged in what they do, and they want to learn what’s out there and we’re constantly getting education on our own, even though they cover very little of it, we still go out and do it because I would feel like I’m doing a disservice. If my mom walked in the door and I have to do something and I don’t even know what the doctor is doing.

I’ve got to learn everything to make sure I could be able to function and make sure that if the doc has a moment where he needs something, I can sort of already know in advance what it is they need, so we can keep it smooth and make sure that everyone’s getting the best care that they’re getting, but it’s a trade-off. How do you do it? These are people you’re dealing with. You’re not… And I don’t think management sees it. That’s how we feel. We feel like we go and they forget they’re not making T-shirts that say “USC” on them. They’re actually taking care of people.

Mel Buer:

Well, I mean, that’s something that my mom, God bless her, used to talk about all the time that these patients aren’t patients, they’re just numbers of people who come through the door, right? And it’s unfortunate that our healthcare system, in large part, due to our insurance system, is set up that way. When you know that every worker who is coming through that door to take care of patients is there specifically to do that job and to take that seriously.

So when there’s a breakdown in scheduling or in staffing in general, and suddenly you’re finding yourself between a rock and a hard place, trying to take care of as many patients, up to 20 patients per shift, which is obscene. It’s tough to handle that caseload when, as you say, you might be the only person in that section of the hospital on that floor for eight hours. That’s incredibly… I don’t know how you do it, power to you, and I really hope that that can change.

Speaking of that changing, Francisco or Noemi, do you want to talk about how the negotiations have been going? What are the demands that you’ve brought to the administration? How has management responded? I got a little fact sheet and the way that management seems to be responding is frustrating, to say the least, so if you would like to talk about how those negotiations are going?

Francisco Cendejas:

Yeah, I can give you a quick summary. Look, this is the first contract to be negotiated at this hospital since getting over the worst of the pandemic, right? In that time, almost 20% inflation in three years, which is the duration of the last contract, right? So this is a time where the employees are looking for a way to not just fix everything that has been wrong for years now, right? But then also, yeah, make back everything that they lost as their wages just declined and declined and declined in their actual value, right?

So what are we looking for? Wages that actually match the premier hospital employers in LA County, right? It’s one thing for Keck Medicine of USC to say that they’re top of the market, leading hospital, and it’s another thing to actually recognize that in terms of compensation to employees. So yeah, that’s one thing.

Maintaining benefits for all members. How absurd that hospital workers have to be fighting for free family healthcare, right? Which our members do have. But this is something that the employer wants to take away based on their proposals. We’ve also proposed to ensure that we are properly recognizing people’s loyalty and time of service with the company, which is something that they’ve also been rejecting.

But see, what we’re looking for here is, of course, to maintain a strong contract that’s been in place for a long time, make the necessary improvements to make up for the last three years of terrible inflation. And what we’ve seen from other hospital employers is that look, they know that something has to be fixed, so they come to the bargaining table and they say, “All right, look, this is after the pandemic, those were strange times, and this is now a unique occasion and we need to fix things.” That’s been the posture that we’ve seen from a lot of other employers, and that’s why healthcare workers and in other industries too, right? Union members are winning better contracts than have happened before.

And instead, what we’re seeing from Keck, is just tons of takeaway proposals, which are terrible on their own, but just wildly misplaced considering just the strength of unions and the labor movement now, right? Shocking to think that they’re going to propose, for example, that union members can’t meet with their union reps in the break rooms, right? That’s an absurd thing. It’s an absurd thing at any point that they would propose to get rid of seniority-based hiring, right? And say, “Well, we want to have more discretion in determining whether someone is more skilled and therefore more qualified.” Right? Things like being able to dredge up old disciplines that are more than a year old to be able to stack on top of current issues…

Francisco Cendejas:

… stack on top of current issues, and instead of letting old disciplines expire over time, which is in the contract currently. But I think maybe even just maybe some of this is some of the most shocking that now would be the time that the employer would say, “We want to be able to subcontract all of your jobs, not without bargaining, but we want to send any position that we want over to another company to do.” Or if Keck were to sell a hospital or a clinic, can’t guarantee you that your job is still going to be there. We want to get rid of what’s called a successorship guarantee. Right? That your job and your union contracts or union representation would stay in the proposing to get rid of that too.

These are the kinds of things that are just, like I said, they’re terrible takeaway proposals to issue to union members at any point, especially now when folks are so ready to fight for the contract that they deserve. I mean, here’s the thing about our history with this company. We’ve never settled a contract with Keck Medicine of USC without at least authorizing a strike against them. And at times, even going out. It doesn’t look to be different this time, it doesn’t look like they want it to be different this time. And it’s shocking to think that that’s what you would want to have happen, as we emerge out of the worst of the pandemic, the first contract to be negotiated after the worst of it.

Mel Buer:

Has management given any sort of rationale for why they would submit these takeaway proposals? Is there some sort of perceived economic reason for this or anything at all that would clue you in as to at least what they’re attempting to present as the reason for why they’ve asked to do include these?

Francisco Cendejas:

I mean that the company gives reasons, sure, they give reasons. But they give the same reasons about whether they’re talking about hospitals or whether they’re talking about any other industry, and say, “Well, we need to have greater flexibility in operations. Management needs the rights to be able to determine staffing levels, and that’s why we can’t agree to add a few more positions in your department where you are so sorely understaffed.” And so on and so on. So we could be talking about a widget factory, we could be talking about a clinic. And the reasons are the same, that they’re saying, that any boss is saying to a union bargaining committee of just, “Well, we want to have more power here in the workplace.” So sure, they’ve got their reasons and they’re not new ones.

Mel Buer:

Right. Yeah, that’s a good point, and it’s something that I bring up a lot when I talk to union workers who are in the midst of contract negotiations or organizing drives. Noemi I’m sure you have these conversations with your fellow workers on the floor. It comes down to power, because often when we’re about these corporations, whether it’s a hospital or Kellogg’s or Amazon or Starbucks or whatever, it could be a small business down the road. But oftentimes they either give you that more flexibility excuse where they tell you there’s not enough money for those proposals. But what it comes down to is, they don’t like it when workers come together collectively to organize for better working conditions and assert their rights in the workplace.

And it is really a power struggle. And so, I think it’s good to kind of zoom this out a little bit and to give that context to our listeners. What is the biggest thing that you want our listeners to know about perhaps this contract struggle, but maybe about healthcare work organizing in general that you think is really important for folks to know who have not had the same exposure to it that you and I may have had?

Noemi Aguirre:

I mean, healthcare is the only place that I’ve been in, so I can’t really say as it compares to something else. But what would I want folks to know? What I want them to know is that at the end of the day, since this is a power struggle, you just have to find the more clever way of letting them know that this is what’s going to happen while maintaining that they feel like they’re still in control. Because it doesn’t seem like their power hunger ever ends.

We’ve been negotiating under NUHW for our contracts since 2009, its inception into the union world. But it’s the same thing every time. They want to rewrite the whole book. They want to rewrite from start to finish. Why do we still have to argue about whether the entrance is on the north side or the south side? All this stuff that is seemingly unimportant, when people say, “Hey, well, how’s it going in bargaining?” How’s it going in bargaining? It’s not. It’s slow. It sucks and it makes no sense.

And then you think, “Well, maybe they’re just that much smarter than you. You start to question yourself, but don’t question yourself. Because you start to think, “Maybe what I’m asking for either doesn’t make sense or I’m not getting the bigger picture.” And it’s not true because the turnover rate, even for admin, is the same as the turnover rate for the workers. So, what’s happening in the bigger picture? This organization that calls itself USC, does the right hand know what the left hand’s doing? I don’t know. It’s because they entrust all these people that, at the end of the day, are human. And even if it’s a smaller department, as long as they’re overseeing two or three people, we cannot trust them to do the right thing. I don’t know why we still are where we are.

An employer like USC, that’s humongous, still has to be forced to do the right thing. Every single time we have to, “Oh, we’re going to strike you. Oh, we’re going to this you. Oh, we’re going to that you.” Why haven’t we already knocked out… Why don’t we already know where we’re parking? We should. We park in the same place. Maybe a block over, maybe not a block over. What does it matter? Why are we still discussing things? Why do we rewrite this entire thing every time? And one of our negotiations, a couple of contracts ago, we had a second year anniversary for negotiations. What the hell’s going on?

And then they look at you when you get something that’s status quo, they’re like, “Oh, you see, you got your parking back.” What are you talking about? You are the one that opened up the can of worms that should have never been opened so that we could talk about what’s happening now in 2024 or whatever year it is that we’re negotiating. We need to talk about our circumstances now and the climate and how crazy everything is getting, so that we can deal with people that are tired of working just in general. Or even everybody in respiratory, everybody in nursing, even the people that PCTs and EBS workers that had to clean during COVID that just saw… I mean, it’s not normal. I mean, unless we’re in a war zone, which we didn’t think we signed up for, it’s not normal to see people just being carted off and carted off. And you couldn’t do anything and you couldn’t do anything. And you’re just like, “What is going on?” It just doesn’t make any sense.

So, it is a power trip. And don’t let it sway you and think that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because you’ve been doing what you’re supposed to be doing all along. It’s just these human beings that think that if the trustee is giving money and he wants more bang for his buck, he needs to make more money. And in the end, what do we do? Oh, we get our towels are cheaper. Our linen is cheaper. Because if they only cut 10 cents here, they can make more money. And you’re just like, “Okay, great. Now I need two sets of linen because the patient’s freezing because you switched the thick blanket for the thinner blanket. But now I got to use two.”

So, it’s like this common sense stuff. And you think to yourself, “What is going on here?” Do they care? No. They just want to be able to tell you what to do. It is nothing but power. Do not second guess yourself. You know what you’re doing, you’re good at it, and you should exert your rights. You should always exert your rights. But anyway.

Mel Buer:

Yeah. Well, and those small cuts, and Francisco, I’m sure you can speak to this too, those small cuts and the cheapness or the quality of supplies, for example, don’t do anything to pad the pockets of the workers. It’s not like they’re making those cuts to save money so they can raise wages. I’m staring at executive salaries to the tune of millions of dollars per year that have not changed, I’m sure, except to go up. While your average Keck healthcare worker makes $61,000 a year, which after taxes in California, it’s probably what, less than 50 take home. That’s untenable. It’s not a livable situation in a county like Los Angeles, because the cost of living here is way too high.

And so, I guess here’s a question just to kind of drag all those nebulous thoughts together so that you actually have something to respond to. Francisco, you talked about the fact that every contract has at least had a strike authorization. If you would like to talk about that, do you see that in the future for this one as well? Or are you hoping to avoid that and to actually have a fruitful negotiation that doesn’t end up there?

Francisco Cendejas:

Yeah. I mean, anyone on the bargaining committee will tell you, what we’re trying to do is get to a fair contract that is good for the membership. Right? Anyone will tell you that that’s the first thing that they want to see happen. Also, the history with this employer is the history with this employer. And their proposals right now are what they are. Right? So, is this noticeably better than in the past? Absolutely not. It’s…

Francisco Cendejas:

… Is this noticeably better than in the past? Absolutely not. I think these takeaways are terrible and the thing is our members are not going to tolerate them. So as a strike authorization possible, it’s absolutely possible. And it’s a decision that our bargaining committee who are elected by their coworkers because that’s who our union is, right, all the decisions about whether a strike is going to happen or going to be called for, it’s going to be for up to our bargaining committee.

And I don’t see it going in the direction where we’re not going to having to ask ourselves that question. I mean, just remembering who USC is here, they’re the largest private sector employer in LA. The tone that is established then in these negotiations is felt far beyond just what happens in this clinic or within this one unit in the hospital. Because of their sheer size, they are a premier employer in certain aspects, just not in the ones where they don’t want to be in, the ones that really impact the thousands of members that we represent there that do the actual work of keeping LA healthy. So where is this going? I think our members are going to have to answer that question pretty soon.

Mel Buer:

Thank you so much, both of you, for coming on and talking about this really important negotiation. Before I get your final thoughts, I will say just listening to this conversation and talking about what it means to be a premier sort of healthcare employer in the city, Keck has the ability to really set itself up to be a community leader in this way. And there’s nothing here that says that coming to a fair agreement with its workers is going to not do that.

And if they care about their reputation, both as an employer and as a trusted and safe set of hospitals and healthcare clinics that can actually take care of some of patients who are in the worst sort of illnesses of their lives, this is an important piece I think. So those are kind of my final thoughts and I really appreciate you both coming on. Before I do my little outro, do either of you have any final thoughts that you would love for our listeners to know? Is there a way to reach out to your union to offer support? Any major dates coming up in terms of negotiations or information sessions or anything that you think our listeners might be interested in?

Noemi Aguirre:

I can do my last thought and then Francisco can give you the important dates.

Mel Buer:

Cool.

Noemi Aguirre:

Okay. Just as an example, I wanted to let you know that priorities… I mean, again, biggest employer in Southern California. Are their employees a priority? Well, doesn’t feel that way. They interrupted… Our contract expired in April. We started negotiations in March. We had beaucoup dates in March. We were not getting anywhere, but at least we had dates. Come April, they basically blocked us out for an entire month because they interrupted our negotiations to run and see if they can go and do something football related. Because that is where their priorities lie. And we know it and we felt it. And when people ask why didn’t we meet in April? We’re like, “Well, they have bigger priorities, their football team.” That money over there has bigger priorities. So we’ve felt that. We felt that the entire time. And it’s a symptom of everything and it’s the bigger picture all the time.

But what I am happy about and I want everybody to know that I am happy to know that it does feel like labor is having the sort of a rebirth, a renaissance because of everything we see. So people are actually excited to go out there and fight. And they’re not afraid right now. They weren’t afraid last year. They weren’t afraid this year. And I think that that momentum hopefully holds and it feels like it is going to hold that when you look up employment, you know what? I don’t want to leave this place. I want to hold [inaudible 00:34:28] accountable to what they need to do to my coworkers and to everybody else in this hospital. I could very easily go to county. I could very easily go to UCLA. I have the experience. I know people… Every community is a small community when you just take it for itself and we can go anywhere and get more money and work less, but I’m not going to.

I like my commute. I’ve done a lot here. I think there’s still a lot to do. I think there’s still a lot to learn because we learn something every day and I’m glad. I’m glad that labor has this great awakening and that we’re no longer afraid that if I lose my job, I’m going to be a destitute next week because I feel like I have learned enough and I’m capable enough that I can just go somewhere else. And that absence of fear is also what’s been driving… And I guess we could thank COVID for that. That there’s a lot of some jobs in certain sectors. But that’s the great part about it, is that more people are willing to speak up and I love it. So I think keep it up. Working people should keep it up because we’re the ones that have to dictate everything. We’re the ones here.

Francisco Cendejas:

Noemi said it right. Look, we are still in negotiations. We have bargaining dates both multiple this week and next week too. So this is a very much evolving situation. Techuschealthbeforewealth.nhw.org, that’s where the public can see some of the updates about our bargaining and also of course following us on social media. But this is an important critical time for the labor movement, in LA, in our state across the country, And this fight is hopefully one more drop in the big wave that is necessary for the rebirth of our movement. Thanks a lot for having us on.

Mel Buer:

Absolutely. And we’ll make sure to put that link in the show notes and any relevant of informational… I got some good informational packets as part of doing this research for this. So for any of our listeners either in Southern California or elsewhere in the country who want to see the updates and get a sense of what’s been going on in healthcare organizing, I will make sure that those end up in our show notes. Thank you as always for coming on and taking the time to talk about this. I think this is an extremely important piece of contemporary labor organizing, which is why I’ve even brought on working people to really talk about is the struggles that are happening now that are affecting the material conditions of workers, union organizers, and folks in the community that these workers serve. So thank you so much for coming on you both.

As always, I want to thank you all for listening and thank you for caring. We’ll see you back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got there for our patrons. And please go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories of the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Network newsletter so that you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and become a supporter today. Once again, I’m Mel Buer and we’ll see you next time.

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Mel Buer is a staff reporter for The Real News Network, covering U.S. politics, labor, and movements and the host of The Real News Network Podcast. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and others. Prior to joining TRNN, she worked as a freelance reporter covering Midwest labor struggles, including reporting on the 2021 Kellogg's strike and the 2022 railroad workers struggle. In the past she has reported extensively on Midwest protests and movements during the 2020 uprising and is currently researching and writing a book on radical media for Or Books. Follow her on Twitter or send her a message at mel@therealnews.com