‘Union is our power’

 —Sunnyside HHA grads join 1199SEIU’s 480,000 members.

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THE largest healthcare union in the United States has added newly trained Home Health Aide (HHA) workers from New York City on its roster of “growing” members.

In an orientation meeting at the Sunnyside Community Services in Queens April 3, 1199SEIU (United Healthcare Workers East) organizer Monica Landinez emphasized that 1199SEIU has a membership of 480,000 as of that day, making it the biggest and largest healthcare union all over the country.

“Union is our power—a political power,” Landinez enthused.

Landinez, who has been with Sunnyside Community Services for 37 years, was part of a mammoth delegation that marched to the Washington D.C. in 2017 to protect the Medicaid, a government program in the United States that provides health insurance for adults and children with limited income and resources.

She said the union’s chief mission is to advocate for quality care and good jobs for all.

The union supports and protects frontline caregivers in hospitals, nursing homes, homecares, clinics, pharmacies and all other areas of the healthcare industry.

They include nurses, nurse aides, techs, laboratory workers, clerks, housekeepers, dietary workers, transporters, pharmacists, social workers and many other types of medical professionals.

Founded in 1932, the union’s mission has been “to stand up for quality healthcare, good jobs and social justice for all.”

1199SEIU is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has over 2 million members and is the largest labor union in North America.

Meanwhile, as a result of the big D.C. march Landinez and fellow marchers participated in 2017, three functions central to the roles of Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a joint federal-state program providing health coverage to low-income, uninsured children, and MACPAC, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, a non-partisan legislative branch agency that analyzes and makes recommendations on Medicaid and CHIP policies, have been addressed.

These were: providing health insurance for children; making payments to safety-net hospitals; and monitoring access to care under managed care and fee for service (FFS).

The new 1199SEIU members from the Sunnyside Home Care Project enlisted on April 3 came from a new batch of HHA graduates trained under nurse practitioner Jorge Gomez and his assistants Gloria Caballero and Carlos Meza-Alvarez and supervised by training program director Siobhan Simpson.