It Could Happen Here - The Union Election That Could Change Everything, Part 2

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Raina, Eric, and John from Shift Change discuss their vision for what National Nurses United could be and how a democratic and responsible union can build power for everyone.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Enjoy. Outside of the obvious, the union is doing landlordism for some reason part, which is just sort of, I can't get over it. Like, what? What do you mean you have $44 billion? The thing you're doing is being a landlord. But yeah, I mean, it seems like they're, you know know like out of one side of their mouth saying this is a democratic union their side of their mouth they're doing political purges they're like doing everything possible to

make sure people don't know how the like democratic process works which i think is a pretty like basic precept of democracy is that if if if it's impossible to figure out how the system actually works it's not it's not it's not actually a democracy in any real sense exactly yeah and you know yeah and this is the thing you're saying is like they seem they seem to be acting like bosses like they're firing people they get nervous when people start organizing which is not a thing that you would think a union would be ecstatic that's like oh hey our nurses want to like organize themselves i don't know it's just i mean there's a there's a there's a mentality inside among some people and even among some of

the nurses that like you know when people are causing problems or um um, you know, it's the, yeah, it's, it's a very, it's a very perplexing situation to be in. And, um, many of us, it's taken us years to really figure it out because you don't, we all come to work, right. To do our job. You know, I don't come to work to like, figure out every like little nuance thing about what's going on inside my union i didn't become a union nurse because i wanted to be like a hero union member i did it because it was down the street and it was a good job and like i wanted to be a nurse more than anything in the world so you know this is but this is what we do and this is why things like labor notes and learning how your union works is really important we've been self-educating ourselves.

Like it's almost like you have to become a jailhouse lawyer, right? Yeah. We've been sharing our favorite resources for like, how do you learn about how a union works or what your rights are? And like, we're basically taking notes for what we're going to have to do when we, if we get in power inside the union to educate all the nurses in our union. One of the things a little too, I mean, I, every time I talk with people about this,

I try and give little tips and tricks. Don't leave your staffer alone in a, at the negotiating table. They'll tell you, Oh, everything's going great. Go get, go get some dinner. And you come back and you can't do regressive bargaining. You can't unbargain a, like a thing when someone's been empowered to decide something for you and this is where especially new like new units in um hot in countries or parts of the country without strong union culture are finding that they'll step away from the bargaining table and they'll come back and then all these decisions will be made that they don't have any,

you can't go back on it. It's like literally no backseats in like in union negotiations. No. And so you have to say. There's no such thing as regressive bargaining. If I offer, if I say that I want a, you know,

you offer a 50% increase in a 50 cent an hour increase for floating to another union, a unit, I can't turn around and you can't offer me 45 cents the next go round. You cannot go back. If you said 50%, it has to be more than 50% on the next offer, or you just say, that's my final offer. The idea of regressive bargaining is, I have to tell you, it's amazing, is that when we negotiated against Sutter in 2011 through 2013, we had multiple cases of ULPs filed for regressive bargaining on their part. They constantly made these mistakes, which we as nurses and the labor reps caught. And now for us, it's so important that we don't regressive bargaining on our own members here. We need to be moving forward. We should be making quantum leaps and bounds

as nurses for what we've gone through. We're supposedly the most trusted profession in the country. I think it's for the past 20 years. The only time we have not been the most progressive or the most respected profession was in 2001 and you can obviously guess that it was firemen it was firemen uh but it's like 25 years or so in a row we've been the most uh trusted profession it's because you know how can you not trust somebody who's cleaning you up when you soiled yourself in the bed,

who's holding your hand when you're scared? That's why we're the most trusted profession. And we should be the most respected for what we do. It's just amazing that our union can't carry us through that. Our union was formed in a revolution. We overthrew and kicked out management nurses and formed the California Nurses Association. The bargaining part of the organization, the association broke away from the management part. And Torold Erdahl was a wonderful example, somebody who was part of that revolution.

And for over 20-some years, we were a rabidly progressive union. We didn't have all the rank and file things that we should have had in the union, but it was in the right direction for nurses. And we've kind of made in the past 10 years this U-turn in the association, which I think is bad for nurses. We need to be going forward. And we have new nurses and a new generation that is joining the union, and they need to be a part of it. And they can't look at me and say that old fogey that's been in the union for 30 some years, that I'll be doing the work for them. They need to be active in that union and they need to love the idea of solidarity. Out of the fires of desperation, burn hope and solidarity. It was one of the ladies said,

I think Sharon Burrow from Australia, an Australian labor activist said that. Burrow from Australia, an Australian labor activist, said that. We need to have every union member. I don't think every one of them has to be rabid about it, but they should be aware that they need to stand tall and support each other. They need to support the non-union nurses. We need to get more nurses unionized. The problem with unions is there's not enough unions out there. There's not enough people in the unions. We need to get more nurses unionized. And our union hasn't been able to do that in quite a while. We've been raiding a lot of other unions, but we need to get out there and get people in the South unionized.

We need to get other nurses in the Midwest organized that aren't unionized yet. We have a bigger vision as bedside nurses than I think that our national union has. I'm only as strong as the person next to me. I need support. As John said, we're four people running for the Council of Presidents, but behind us, there's so many nurses supporting us. Nurses are texting me all the time. Hey, give me some pliers. Give me some buttons. I want to pass them out. It's important for us. I know we're at a disadvantage. We don't have the people we're running against, even though it's illegal for them to have the union promote them. They're obviously going to have that advantage like a sitting president because they're going to be in the national nurse magazine going around the country

you know doing the things they do as as sitting presidents so they're going to get that free publicity i wish our union presidents went around the country because as far as I know, they've never come here to Chicago. I think the only time we've been to Chicago is when we had that people power convention there. And that was my first visit back to Chicago. And I think 10 years was when I went there. And it's amazing as it should be. Our union should rotate, rotate where they have their, uh, their, their conventions. They should, we should be all around the country. We should be going to the South and having conventions so that we can attract people.

Um, I think it's important. We, we need to make inroads. Um, you know, I know a lot of it is, they're going to say the pandemic and I think it's important. We need to make inroads. I know a lot of it is they're going to say the pandemic. And I think the pandemic did hasten this siloing. And some of it was a little understandable. But even when it was evident that they should have come out of the borough, they never did. People have been saying how tired they are from the pandemic right like i don't know how they could have been tired the union could have been tired when they were just having zoom calls no no i mean the nurses are saying that they're

tired like but here's what's interesting this is a thing that i'm seeing in real time as we're doing this work is that nurses who have been exhausted and some of the most beat down like like nurses who are like in the worst uh situations um here in chicago are tired but then they hear something interesting is going on with the union that is actually something that they have a say in, which is very unusual in our union. And people get very excited. So I'm having co-workers coming up to me who are the least interested in union business until maybe it's time for a strike. And you know it's interesting because like when we did our strike uh organizing 2019 the first strike in chicago's uh of nurses in like 40 years and uh in chicago

you know they kept it would call these small kind of symbolic actions and they call them stress tests or structure tests uh for like you know we're going to do a we're going to do a press conference and you'd have like you know a handful of nurses come out for the press conference you know like 10 or 15 nurses would come out and they're like oh they're all wringing their hands and then we start calling pickets and then we start blowing past our turnout numbers and then when we did our strike uh they were expecting 800 nurses of 12 1400 nurses more nurses than ever been in any one place in our hospital like it was like a giant party so it's kind of like when people have know that there's something that really has like they have a stake

in right there's an infinite amount of energy almost. And this election is really kind of like, we can't make the buttons fast enough to give away. Like they keep, people keep coming up and they're like, here, give me a handful. I've got coworkers and we're doing there's you know, let's get the pictures of everyone with their nurse,

with their, with their shift change buttons, shift change. And, you know, we're turning that stuff into we're getting ramped up and prepared for like our social media like uh outreach and this is part of it is like getting people to see like hey there are people out there who want to do something different and that put you like as a as a bedside nurse this is our opportunity to get you into the driver's seat of how your union is run, how strikes are called, how we negotiate. Like we want to have a council of hospitals in contract campaigns. It's just nurses from

negotiating teams so that they can all, so we can coordinate and decide when we want to go on strike. And it's not someone who's never been a nurse making that call for us. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

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It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Yeah, which seems just baffling that you'd have some random person who hasn't been a nurse

making strike decisions i mean the fact that it's not also just there seems like there's such an enormous gap between the things you would just basically fundamentally expect a union to be doing and what's actually happening which has nothing to do with that and it's just the sort of i mean almost it seems like like intentional demobilization well they want to treat us like a spigot like they want you like you can turn us on and turn us off you know the problem is is that people don't respond to that well and you kind of constantly have to be honing your practice um through defending the contract which is a big thing that like a lot my coworkers are just constantly annoyed at the contract we're not defending. Our chief nurse rep is always annoyed that she can only scrape together four or five people.

And I do it. I'm really good when I'm in the room. My coworkers think that I do a good job. But when it comes time to doing all of the reading and everything to make sure it's done, I need, you know, it's the thing that I'm always working on and trying to get better at. Um, but you know, the, that is kind of the lifeblood of trade unionism is like, if you're going to have a contract, you need to in between a contract bargaining campaigns where it can go on strike, you need to be constantly probing and pushing and finding where the weak spots

are and keeping people in the practice of like fighting. And if you do that and you're really effective at it, you can affect some pretty impressive changes in between contracts. When our friend was, was the labor rep at, uh, Cook County, they went from having maybe like 10 people doing like the, the rep work to over 60 people doing the rep work. She partnered with a really phenomenal, um, chief nurse rep who had a family uh her dad had been you know president of a seiu local um and they were they had pushed so hard that they were able able to read to open negotiations for attention bonuses which after you've settled a contract is like to open something on economics like on the order of you know 15 20

15 or 10 000 retention bonuses is a huge deal yeah the problem was is that then they fired her when she connected us uh at cook county or the nurses at cook county with nurses at university chicago and uh we started comparing notes with what our staff were like and their chief nurse reps started asking the director of bargaining who's not a nurse and has never been a nurse to say why is it that we're bringing in why is my facility bringing in four million dollars worth of dues and we get like you know,000 worth maybe of staff. Like what's the deal and why is it that we don't spend any money on arbitration or any of this stuff? They're constantly afraid of doing anything.

And that's when they fired Natalie. And then, and now they're down to, they're trying to whittle those, those nurses retention bonus negotiations down to like 3000, 4,000 bucks from like 15,000. You know, you bring in the right people and all of a sudden management has to like hire in like an entire legal, extra legal department at Cook County Health Services. It's not, it's not that somebody is not a nurse. That doesn't matter. Natalie was not a nurse, yet she was an outstanding example of what a labor rep should be.

An organizer. Yeah. I mean, you stand with the workers. I do believe that we need more nurses involved in organizing and inside the union. But I have no issues with, when you have labor reps like Natalie, that's what you need to keep the union thriving. And unfortunately, to cut her down when she was making inroads

to really empower nurses and the union, it's just beyond the pale to make that decision. Why they made that decision is something that I think if we won the presidency, we'd want to find out. Why was that decision made? Because a big part of this is holding the staff accountable is our big thing. Like we just need to know, right now there's no accountability. So imagine having a job where, like if you were a nurse,

like if we're speaking to our coworkers right now, imagine being a nurse and no one ever checking your charting, no one ever checking what a patient has to say about the care they got, no one asking a doctor, like what you did during a shift. No one

checking to see if all of your vital signs are actually really reflected in the monitor. That's the situation we're dealing with staff right now. No one who's outside of their staff bosses at the director level has... They're

only accountable to those people and they are only accountable and and they're not actually accountable they just write like they they write everything themselves they write their own reports they get they you know they'll take you know a nurse will come up with a good idea they'll run it up the flagpole check out this awesome idea i have boss i mean it sounds like a downer i guess it's like uh it all sounds very like this is all grim and like depressing but the fact is is that we are at a point now where we see what's going on and what we need to do we've been educating ourselves about what can be done to change the union because the union is a democratic structure, even in like just the shell form of it. And as nurses, we've got a lot of faith that as nurses,

we can figure this out and come up with a much better, more democratic way to run our union. And I think that it'll fundamentally be a much stronger organization. I think that's the fear is that somehow we like, you know, some people are like, Oh, you're going to make it worse. And it's like, I don't know that you could make it worse that somehow we like, you know, some people are like, oh, you're going to make it worse. It's like, I don't know that you could make it worse. It's like, you know, there's the health care industry is changing. I think we're seeing this in real time as the health care industry is changing. You have hospitals that come up with the most cutting edge version of healthcare, like the University of Chicago, or the university systems out in California, or maybe like Stanford.

That's like the top end of what healthcare is. And those hospitals are like, basically, they might as well be gold mines. And then you've got the safety net hospitals. And my fear is that the safety net hospitals, they would like to casualize to Uber. They keep telling us about, oh, they're going to Uberize nursing. Well, you know, what is it that they're doing to stop, you know, over half of the nurses

being at Cook County Health Service from being replaced with agency nurses right now? Like, how long is that going to go until there's like, you know, they go from a bargaining unit of, you know, over 1500 nurses in the union or 1700 nurses in a union to like, you know, it could theoretically drop down to, you know, a handful of union nurses. And so they've like, it's like an unofficial layoff, right? People quit and they institute a hiring freeze

and then they don't replace them they bring them in as agency nurses because they would rather in these safety net institutions not pay benefits not pay pensions you know our hospital we lost they took our pension away and the union didn't do anything to fight that back i was in the the pension plan for like two years and then they were like guess what no more pensions and the union didn't do shit about it and they could have done something i mean it was like uh it's because the contract language was like well you get whatever we offer you and our teamsters uh in our facility took like a very like a hundred you know two to four hundred dollar buyout to get rid of their

pensions and that was the end of our pensions for the entire medical center um and then the our union where our staffers are all bought into the steel workers pension right they have a pension they're like well john maybe you'd have to strike six or eight times, which is what they say whenever they don't want to do anything. And they certainly aren't telling us about hospitals like the folks at Alta Bates who are struck like 10 times to get what it takes. And it's just like, you know, striking, I think there's this idea that it's scary. I have co-workers who are telling me, John, just tell me when the next strike is. I can't wait for the next strike. But we've been through it. We have a lot of coworkers who haven't. Half of our nurses are new. They've never been

through a strike, but you build a union through strikes, which is the thing that is a little counterintuitive, especially if you do it the right way and you're strategic about it. Raina, you've been real quiet. What do you think about all this? That's really the- Well, number one, I'm a lady and i don't interject unless i absolutely have to so to go back earlier what uh what was said about how unique our slate is well it's unique in itself for one of, I kind of sit with being a female and minority, but you also got to think about the men.

Now, there is not a lot of men in nursing in general. And I think that's what also they need to look at because I heard the criticism about that. But let's flip the script on this. the criticism about that but let's flip the script on this i mean we individually as eric and john did say before that we were not here to be a council of presidents like on there we was actually jumping on it to help other people but from you know i myself and eric we've been knowing each other for what, seven, six, seven years. Yeah. Something like that. And that's about right. Yeah. And, you know, I have seen the changes with the union. I feel that the union has been really stagnant. I think our dues should be used for community. And now during the pandemic, there is a lot of nurses are totally burnt out

and they're slowing to realize that nursing is not what I thought. I did not sign for, for this pandemic. I never, I've been a nurse for 13 years. I never knew that was never thought it was going to be a pandemic like this. So it changed your whole spectrum of what nursing stands and also what we should do to preserve it. Now, I, you know, I look young, but I am a grandma about to be four. And so one of them are going to be a nurse one day. And actually, one of them is a 10 year old. And he told me, he said, you know, looking at all my nursing books and looking at you know all my medical stuff and he's looking at me he said you know what I may want to be a nurse now mind you

two years ago he wanted to be a race car driver so it happened so it it kind of inspired me a little bit like I need to do more leadership I mean I think I'm a natural leader in itself. It's just how to do it, where to go. And this is just a step for me. I'm at that age, you know, I need to look behind me of all the younger nurses, my family and what my young grandchildren, what they may be. And I want to preserve that. And that's a third reason why I'm standing to do this. So, and my peers, I mean, you work, any nurse work eight to 12 hours. The facility that you work with

is almost a second home to you. So you want to stand up with your peers. You know, there shouldn't be no divide. We're all standing for an employer who has been trying to take benefits away, trying to take, you know. Anything that makes it decent for you to just work and also is wearing and tearing on your your wellness and your work like balance and just your whole mental state. So it's so important to really know about your union, about the breakdown of it, about the history, about everything you need to keep your employer accountable. And also within the union, just like nurses have to be accountable for everything we do. And if we get in trouble, of course, we're going to be accountable for everything we do and if we get in trouble of

course we're going to be reprimanded the union needs to also go through the same thing as we do it's only fair so that's pretty much it for me any other questions you're reading uh are you have you finished up your copy of uh solidarity unionism yet uh reina oh you mean the rank and file? I am on chapter three. It's been on. It's been interesting. And since I will be going on vacation. Well, I am on vacation right now. I'll be leaving tomorrow. I should be finishing up that book by then. That's a that's one thing that like I don't want anyone to think just because I can speak about the union in a halfway intelligible way that I've been studying this for a long time.

A lot of my knowledge about the union is pretty new and recent. And I picked up a copy of Stoughton Lynn's Labor Law for the Rank and Filer. There's an audio book of it it's just this great like short little book about everything you need to know to kind of like exercise your rights and try and stay out of like uh trouble um i picked up a copy of uh you know uh jane mccavely's no shortcuts uh we've been passing around a copy of stotton Lynn's, uh, Solidary Unionism. Um, and like, there's a lot. And then we went to labor notes and like, it's funny cause our union sent us to labor notes.

Like I've got pictures of me and like, uh, other shift change people that, uh, were taken by staff that we were at the labor notes conference. The funny thing was, is that I was in the talks about how to build a caucus and how to exercise their democratic rights. I was one of the few, the only nurses in some of those spaces.

And you know, I don't know what they expected to happen, but the way they're treating this whole thing, every little thing that we've gotten, the fact that we can set that we're about to be able to send emails out was the thing that we had to fight for every step of the way they gave us a set of rules that the rules are the most conservative interpretation of our legal democratic rights that are set in federal law they gave us like the 1950s like carpenters union interpretation of like those those rights.

They ignored all the case law that we have to be able to communicate with our coworkers through normal union channel. Like every communication method or union uses to normally communicate with us legally, we should have access to. Now they're trying to throttle that. It's like, Oh, you can only send an email communication every 15 days. It's like, you know what? Like you're doing your little whisper campaign like 24 hours, 24-7. And then you have to opt in to like to communication about the election. Like they were trying to keep and they're cutting meetings short.

They're cutting meetings off. They were trying to bury this. Now we think that they're trying to shift gears because they know that this is a lot more serious, um, than, uh, than they thought it was, you know, we're not here to, you know, turn the union upside, like, well, maybe turn the union upside down is a good way to think of it, but in a good productive way, not in a, you know, turn it upside down and shake it, you know, to like, you know, destroy it. We want to turn it upside down so that it's the way a real union is supposed to be is it people who are elected into leadership are accountable to the

people who elect them and um and our goal is to you know to make the union like we want to go from something like you know chicago teachers union which is really powerful and famously like democratic, wasn't always that way. It was only focused on very basic stuff, you know, before the women in the Chicago Teachers Union took it over and changed it for the better. to have that internal vibrant discussion and debate about how the union should work, because we know that as nurses that we've got the skills and the capacity to have an impact on that. As we said, we don't think that people who are paid out of our dues should ever be afraid when a nurse opens their mouth and says, I think things could be better, or I don't like how this is happening. or I don't like how this is happening.

Yeah, and I think one more thing I do kind of want to add is that, you know, you were talking a bit earlier about sort of the risk of stagnation. And I mean, I think something that people don't want to hear is that like, you know, there's been a wave of militancy in the last few years but the actual union like the actual unionization rate of the u.s keeps going down and i think a big part of that is you know like even even even in the periods when unions were really strong they got into these sort of bureaucratic patterns where people were busy sort of fighting their own internal like like busy fighting their own rank and file. And then when the bosses came for them, they got destroyed.

And I don't know, like it really seems like a moment where either unions are going to, people like you are going to win and you get these rank and file movements that are changing what the union is to be what it's supposed to be or the last remnants of unionism is going to die and that's i don't know like i mean it's depressing but that's like if you just look at the unionization rate chart it just keeps going down and down and down and every time it seems like it's hit a new low it's like it finds another way to go out which i guess is kind of a grim way to look at it but i don't know i mean it is very positive to think about how um how there's organizing that's difficult it's hard to get people to do some things right um it's difficult to pull people together for you know um certain types of uh organizing when they don't feel like they have a say or a stake in what's going on but i will say that like it has been it is always eye-opening when i watch my co-workers

pull together in this thing and i think that there's that common experience at work and especially care workers right now it is like um that is driving us to do different things there's a reason why we're having a rank and file movement in our union now and things aren't just continuing like continuing to stagnate i think that people recognize that their union has to be fighting for them i think that's a big thing people want the union to fight um not to just kind of like sit there and you know you know people get really frustrated when they feel like their dues are being taken and they're not seeing that immediate benefit. Um, the immediate benefit only comes when we pull together and we fight back.

Um, so I think that I totally see what you're saying. I think a lot of that comes down to people who get into these positions. And this is why we believe in the principle of like rotation and like, and turning over the leadership as much as possible is that I think when you stay in a, no one should be in a position of order, organize yourself out of a job, right? If you're doing your, your, if you're being effective, you're organizing yourself out of a job. And I organized out of myself out of some jobs and right now i've organized myself out of telling people that there's a movement and that we've got to participate in it and now i'm moving

on to other things because i have like a whole crew of people in my hospital who are doing that organizing work without me having to do it so i I think that there's like, it's can be a little depressing when you look at like the raw numbers. But I think that a lot of that is like, it's like, if you, if your union is clearly not great, and people kind of complain about it, then yeah, no one's going to want to join it. Like, if your union thinks it's more important to be a landlord or you know stash 42 million dollars in the bank then it is to invest that money in actually building organizational expertise

or you know building organizing the unorganized like eric was saying in places that are like right-to-work states which we've won we have won contracts in right right-to-work states but you have to be looking you have to be constantly pushing for it. And you can't just take a little win here or there and then be excited because you just got another union to affiliate you like our union does. We need to be working on actually bringing more and more workers into our union. And if we don't do that, it will die. But I think that there's a spirit in the, you know, that, you know, when you come to a place to work with coworkers and you face common enemy and common problems, common conditions, you do see

what it can look like when people decide to do something on their own. to do something on their own. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian, Elian, Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian, Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot.

Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. You know, to get back to Mia's point about declining unionism in this country. In order to change this decline in unionism, we need to change who we are as union members. I'm not a big Dr. Phil fan, but he used to say that thing all the time. Well, how's that working for you? Unions need to take a look at themselves and say, how is this working for you? We are declining. Why do we continue to do the same thing we're doing over and over again? We need to change who we are. For example, as a nurse,

a nurse needs to know when they stand up and speak out, that when they stand up, they won't be standing alone, that there'll be somebody around them, that other nurses are going to be there right behind them, backing them up. And that goes for any trade. We can't progress as workers without struggle, and there will be struggle. We need to march forward. We need to be able to say, everybody that can be in a union should be in a union. And we need to expand ourselves. As nurses, I mean, I don't want to harp on it, but this pandemic was devastating for us. This pandemic was devastating for us. Obviously, no nurses worked remotely.

No, I should say, no bedside nurse worked remotely. I know many of our nurse managers worked remotely and checked in on us through online things. But for the most part, every bedside nurse was at that bedside. It was not pleasant. It was something that I'm sure many nurses are probably in counseling for. They were that traumatized by it. Many people had lost family members, just like the rest of the public did, and yet they still had to continue to work. I think as a union, we need to change who we are. And like I said, I don't want to point fingers or anything at people that are in the union now or the people we're running against. I'm sure they're good people, but we

have a different idea and we want to bring a change to how the union runs. And I think that change will make us a stronger and better union. And I think we'll have happier nurses and we'll end up with more activist nurses who will expand the union. It's going to be a word of mouth. One thing, you can have the best organization in the world, but the things that are the best product, but what really makes your product worthwhile is word of mouth campaigns. People have to talk about you. People have to say, hey, you know, that California Nurses Association, that NNU, they're really doing something. I want to be a part of that. You know, we need to, you know, we've been pressing on a Medicare for all single payer and of course ratios for everybody. But we need to start organizing more in all those states where those workers suffer.

Because I can tell you this right now, I never talked about it with John, our hospital is filled with nurses from the South. And they tell you, oh, I came to California for the ratios. They tell you, oh, I came to California for the ratios. They need to fight for those ratios back in Alabama and Mississippi and all the states they come from. We need to help them bring unions to the South. The basic core of right to work was racism. The racism is what drove right to work. It was the same people that brought you segregation is what brought you right to work was racism. The racism is what drove right to work. It was the same people that brought you segregation is what brought you right to work. And, you know, that's a fact.

And it's important for us that, you know, we want to be an activist union. And I'm not opposed to that. But we can do that by unionizing these hospitals and making those nurses' bedside lives a lot better. You know, Stoughton Lynn, it's funny, is that I always laugh. You know, John brings it up. I'm originally from Canton, Ohio. And, of course, Stoughton Lynn taught, I believe it was at Youngstown State. He spent the last part of his life after his Vietnam War activism in the Youngstown area. And I think the last book I read

by him was Wobblies and Zapatistas. He was talking about the... It's a great book. And not many people know about him. I knew about him in Ohio because, you know, uh, uh, you know, social justice work there, uh, uh, you know, uh, at Walsh, that time it was Walsh college and then Walsh university. Now, uh, you know, Joe Torma, uh, the professor there, uh, you know, was often talk about, uh, Stott and Lynn. And that's how I, professor there, you know, was often talk about Stott and Lynn, and that's how I, you know, started reading a lot of his works. The things that he says about rank and file workers is something that we need to make part of the national conversation. And we need to get that message out. We need to tone down the big union actions and the big union talk.

Let's just make it a nurse's conversation. We always talk about our union about nurses' values. Nurses' values are invaluable. They apply to every walk of life, every trade. And I think that's what we need to do. And I know that's what Mark would say if he was on the call with us. I just got a text from him. He's almost finished with our video. So he's working hard.

I mean, the guy took two weeks of his own time. And that's another thing. Here we are, we are bedside nurses. He had to self-teach himself how to make pretty high-end quality videos. And we're not bought and sold. We don't hire anybody to do our work for us. We're doing this ourselves. We're bootstrapping it as what they call bootstrapping yourself up here. We are bootstrapping a as you know what they call bootstrapping it uh yourself up here we are bootstrapping uh a campaign and a movement um i don't know if we're going to win uh we we we are at least going to make a hell of an impression on people um and i hope whether we win or lose that impression goes far and that people listen to what we're saying and demand what we're standing for, what we want our union to be. We don't want to have an SEIU-like union.

We don't want to, like we're paying for services here. We want a union that listens to us and does what we want. We want a union that listens to us and does what we want. A nurse shouldn't have to beg a labor rep to say no. We said no to a last, best, and final, and our labor reps said, no, in our professional opinion, this is a good deal. Well, guess what, Mia? We got 10% more by saying no. And I know that sounds greedy, but in reality, we do get paid considerably more in California than in other places in the country.

But also to buy a house in a bad neighborhood is a million and a half dollars. Correct. I have to drive an hour away just to get to work. buy a house in a bad neighborhood is a million and a half dollars correct so it so it's i have to drive an hour away just to get to work it is cheaper where i live right now than it is in the bay area i could not get a house in the bay area at all and we should be incorporating housing demands into our negotiations as well like especially if you're gonna be a landlord like come on well okay how about we you know uh the first public housing was really cooperative housing built by unions like there's no reason why um you know these some of these institutions are in like incredibly wealthy

and building uh you know if we can we have the kind of power to bring them to, you know, a screeching halt, we should be able to like, you know, get the kind of things that we need to live by in our community. Like we should be living where our patients are anyway. And it's, you know, and it's a, a way of bringing our, bringing us ourselves into our community so that our community is, you know, that we're part of our community. Um, and, you know, I think we're, I'm just going to say, I'm going to be, uh, waking up in six hours so that I can go back to work. Um, and we want to make sure that people know a couple of key things. uh there is an election happening if you are a nurse

in a cna california nurses association or national nurses united and an oc like hospital there is an election happening ballots are being mailed out to you um on uh on april 10th we expect that they're going to start arriving a day or two after that. We are the shift change slate. So the, the four of us are running for the council of presidents. It's Eric, Raina,

John, and Mark. And if you want to find us on social media, we just got our, our Instagram account. We are called shift change and a new we're on Tik TOK. Now we're going to be releasing some videos, uh, shift change and a new, and then we're also going to have, um, we've got our YouTube and Facebook set up as well. Look for us there. And we've got to go fund me because we've got to buy the materials that we are using to help organize with.

Thankfully, by the sounds of it, our lawyers are going to be working for us because they believe in what we're doing. And these are movement lawyers. These are not right-wing people who want to fight unions. They want unions to be accountable to the workers and to be strong fighting unions. And that's our main goal. We think that our union could be one of the most powerful unions in the country if we organize and fight.

And we organize by building our relationships, trust and solidarity by constantly working to defend our contract. And we think that as we build that energy, we can take that to all the other things that we think are important as nurses. So we talked about nurses values, we know those are actually nurses values, and not some person who decided that they're going to tag along with us, and ride on our coattails to, you know, whatever political future that they think they have. You know, we are, you know, this is our union and we're going to make it, you know, accountable to us so that we can change the world and change our workplace and make, you know, being a nurse, one of those kinds of jobs that people aspire to and not something

that they come into for two or three years and then leave because it's so terrible. So, I don't know what else to say. I'm ready for shift change. Raina, you ready for shift change? Yep. And just like Nelson Mandela say, I never lose. I either win or I learn.

Hell yes. Hell yeah. I love this. This is the stuff I live for. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mia. Thank you. Thank you all for being on.

This was great, and I really hope you all win. And if we win, bring us back. Yeah, I was about to say. Yeah, give us a report back. We'll tell you everything that happened, and maybe if we win, we'll have a nice victory party, and maybe we'll let you and the rest of

the It Could Happen Here crew maybe do some live stuff for us because I think you should get a kick out of that. Every time I hear a nurse say that I listened to It Could Happen Here, a part of me just like does a little Snoopy happy dance. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura.

I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun,

straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. generative AI to the destruction of Google search. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.