The nurses and technical professionals of Temple University Hospital just scored an important victory for themselves, for the labor movement, and for quality healthcare for everyone.
 
After nearly a month on strike, the 1,500 members of PASNAP scored major contract concessions on what Temple University Health Services had billed as their "last, best and final offer".
 

The Vermont Workers Center and people from across Vermont have been leading a charge to ensure adequate healthcare is guaranteed to people across the state. Vermonters are now one step closer to that goal, with legislation now in place to start designing a healthcare system with a public option, and possibly a single-payer program. 
 

Without the benefit of legal counsel, six South American immigrants waged a court battle against the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and won the right to keep their driving privileges after the agency arbitrarily suspended them. The group didn’t plan on rising up against the agency without legal representation, but they couldn’t get a lawyer to touch their individual (or collective) cases. They were told it was better to keep quiet and not fight authority. Easier to just accept that their driver’s licenses had been revoked...

Originally posted at Philadelphia Weekly

PASNAP members fight for patients, themselves and you, cause you get sick too!

The strike by the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) at Temple University Hospital marks an important moment in Philadelphia’s long history of labor struggle. Unlike previous strikes at Temple Hospital, such as the ones led by nurses in the 1970s, PASNAP members are up against a powerful anti-worker establishment.

Video by Gustavo Martinez


The Temple nurses strike has now entered it's fourth week and on Wednesday community leaders from the NAACP, Temple Student Labor Action Project and Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers, among others, came out to support the striking nurses. Temple Watch reports that formal negotiations are to begin between the union and hospital on Saturday April 24, and on the same day there are plans for a massive rally at the Constitution Center at 4:30PM. 

On, Tuesday April 20th around 2pm, Philadelphia Student Union conducted a 3-minute action. In only 180 seconds, we showed the power and leadership that young people have when we are organized for non-violence.

 
Over the weekend, a hospital patient came to the picket line pleading not to be sent back inside of the hospital due to reportedly bad nursing care.  In response to these troubling incidences, the union for nurses and healthcare professionals at Temple has filed a report with the Department of Health on Monday, April 19, 2010.