Code Red a success for AFT’s healthcare members

The AFT's Code Red campaign has been an overwhelming success for affiliates that have focused their energies on targeting inadequate staffing; workplace safety, training and infrastructure; and the accountability of healthcare corporations. It was the culmination of the COVID-19 pandemic and intolerable working conditions that led to the success of the campaign, say healthcare workers. Members have used education, outreach, activism, collective bargaining and legislation to advocate for their rights.

In the first year, Code Red's focus was on pursuing federal and state legislation and contract language that would require minimum staffing requirements to ensure that all disciplines and workers in healthcare could safely and fully deliver the quality of care that patients deserve.

"Code Red attempted to drive home safe staffing in a real way. Our goal for year one was to have five bills introduced to state legislatures across the country. We got nine bills introduced," said AFT Health Issues director Kelly Nedrow, adding that even though there wasn't an expectation that bills would get passed, three were passed into law.

The other goals of Code Red are to build a solid pipeline of well-trained, adequately prepared health professionals; to create a safe environment for health professionals where violence, hours of work, mental health needs and other adverse conditions and hazards are addressed; and to hold healthcare corporations, agencies and institutions and their executives to standards that prioritize the needs of patients and workers over profits.

The division provided small grants to help affiliates with their own Code Red campaigns and to encourage them to incorporate the same messaging. The components of the affiliate campaign plans were similar to those used in contract campaigns: strong member engagement, strengthening community relationships, political and legislative agendas, leader development and a collective bargaining strategy.

In the last two years, the division has also worked on addressing the unethical recruitment of healthcare workers; healthcare equity-specifically, the fight to keep SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., open; and creating resources for workplace violence and mental health.

Effective communication and storytelling can help convey the challenges of working in healthcare and advocate for better working conditions, so members were invited to participate in a "story slam" to express their feelings about their work in healthcare, which several members did.

[Adrienne Coles, photos by Suzannah Hoover]