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8,000 Nurses and Caregivers Prepare to Strike for Fair Wages in Seattle While CEO Gets 157% Pay Increase

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File this one under: absolutely not okay.

Nurses and caregivers have announced that they are moving closer toward an imminent strike at Swedish Medical Center, the largest healthcare provider in the Seattle area, saying that Providence needs to put patient safety before CEO pay.

Nurses and caregivers are raising alarms that patient care problems and severe understaffing have worsened since Swedish was taken over by the corporate giant Providence, Washington’s largest healthcare corporation which now controls over 1,000 facilities in seven states. Meanwhile, compensation for Providence’s CEO skyrocketed 157 percent to over $10.5 million in 2017. Providence raked in $24 billion in revenue in 2018, and $970 million in profits in just the first three quarters of 2019.

Supermajorities of caregivers have authorized strikes at each of the seven Swedish locations – First Hill, Cherry Hill, Ballard, Edmonds, Issaquah and ambulatory care centers in Redmond and Mill Creek – but management refused to make meaningful progress at the last contract negotiations on December 9.

If the strike occurs, members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW at Swedish would be part of more than 13,000 total strikers at 13 Providence locations throughout the state, including members of UFCW 21 and the Washington State Nurses Association. This would be the largest healthcare strike in recent history.

Since April, Swedish-Providence nurses, nursing assistants, techs, lab workers, dietary workers, environmental service workers, clerks, social workers, and others have been proposing urgent solutions to Swedish-Providence executives. Contract proposals include: safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, affordable health benefits, expanded training opportunities, safeguards against racial discrimination on the job, and fair wages that recruit and retain qualified staff.

Executives have rejected almost all proposals, instead threatening steep cuts to caregivers’ sick time and repeatedly breaking federal labor law by violating caregivers’ rights.

“Being an emergency room nurse is very stressful, but I do this work because I love my patients and feel like I make a real difference in their lives,” said Whittney Powers, who works the 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift at Swedish Edmonds. “I’ve been alarmed to see a steep decline is staffing levels throughout our hospital and nurses are overextended. The safe staffing standard in emergency rooms is one nurse for every four patients, which should be followed at all times. But we are often required to care for five or six patients at a time, many of whom can be in severe distress.”

Powers added, “We often hear complaints from patients that they have to wait a long time for care or can’t get their pain medication in a timely manner. Because they’re also understaffed on the hospital floors, some patients have to stay for days in the emergency room hallways. One of the reasons we’re understaffed is that there’s been a mass exodus of employees because our wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. I pay $1,750 for a studio apartment in Seattle and struggle to make the rent. It’s frustrating that Swedish-Providence has the funds to improve patient safety and staffing, but instead they’re being misappropriated to huge executive pay packages. That makes us feel like patients and staff aren’t valued at Swedish.”

Multiple studies have proven that unsafe staffing levels in hospitals can lead to lower quality care and patient harm, including falls, medication errors and increased deaths. Recently, the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings found that, in the Swedish First Hill Organ Transplant department, “The employer’s failure to respond to the severe staffing shortages and manager hostility and retaliation, all of which jeopardized patient health and staff health, shows a complete disregard for patient care and safety as well as a complete lack of regard for their own employees.”

In one example of worsening understaffing, 11,416 babies were born at Swedish in 2018, 2,000 more than in 2015. Yet, there are only three additional registered nurses in the labor and delivery department. In another example, Swedish had 1,571 patient beds in 2018, 145 more than in 2015. Despite this, Swedish only has one additional environmental service worker to clean and disinfect patient rooms.

“Sometimes environmental service techs can have 26 rooms to clean in an eight-hour shift, and this kind of pressure can lead to dirty rooms and the danger of infection being spread to patients,” said Angel Sherbourne, a certified healthcare environmental service technician who has worked at Swedish First Hill for over five years. “If we don’t have enough staffing, patient rooms can’t be cleaned and sanitized correctly, and workers get burned out, sick and injured. On top of that, we can’t afford to live in the communities where we work. My husband and I have been renting a small room for $850 a month, and struggling to buy a decent house that isn’t falling apart.”

In 2017, the neurosurgery department at Swedish Cherry Hill had a patient safety scandal severe enough to warrant concurrent FBI, U.S. Attorney General, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Washington state Department of Health investigations. Despite Swedish-Providence’s public declaration to solve the crisis, management has since cut staff, including the system-wide elimination of the IV nurse team. It appears that the fundamental cause of the scandal, a focus on increasing profits instead of patient safety, is still infecting the corporate culture at Swedish-Providence.

Approximately 1,000 healthcare workers a year leave Swedish-Providence and there are currently about 900 vacant staff positions. 600 of those positions are registered nurses, and 50 percent of open positions have gone unfilled for 60 days or longer. One of the reasons that Swedish-Providence has difficulty with recruitment and retention is that wages for frontline workers are not keeping up with the soaring cost of living.

Swedish-Providence pays almost 40 percent of its employees below the salary necessary to afford the average one-bedroom apartment in the Seattle area.

Providence management has also broken federal labor law multiple times with unfair labor practices including: retaliating against and terminating employees for union activity; unlawfully surveilling employees; intimidating workers to stop them from speaking out; refusing to provide information necessary to bargain a fair contract; and refusing to bargain in good faith.

The next contract bargaining session with Swedish-Providence management is scheduled for December 30, and if executives do not make significant progress toward improving patient safety and staffing, caregivers say they will set the exact date of their strike shortly thereafter.

“I’ve been a Swedish nurse for 31 years, and I’ve stayed here this long because I’m deeply committed to fulfilling our stated mission of providing excellent patient care,” said Terry Thompson, who works in Swedish Ballard’s perioperative department. “But it’s close to impossible to offer the care our vulnerable patients need because we’re always rushing. Many new nurses go home crying because they feel they could have done better if they had a more manageable patient load. Decisions are being made by executives in corporate offices miles away, who rarely step foot in our hospital. Nurses and healthcare workers are here at the bedside and we must have a voice in setting safe staffing levels. These millionaire Providence executives need to look within and ask themselves if they’re going to do what’s right to protect patient care.”

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News

Trump Vowed to Slash Prices and ‘End Inflation’—Inflation Just Hit Highest Level in Months

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Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that there is “no inflation,” consumer prices jumped in June, rising to an annual rate of 2.7%—the highest level in months. Economists cite the President’s tariffs, now beginning to take effect, along with rising costs for food, energy, and rent.

The Consumer Price Index increase “is slightly higher than expected and is up from an annual pace of 2.4 percent in May,” according to The New York Times.

ABC News called it “a notable surge of price increases as President Trump’s tariff policy took hold.”

“Worsening inflation poses a political challenge for President Donald Trump, who promised during last year’s presidential campaign to immediately lower costs,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday, noting that inflation “rose last month to its highest level since February as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs push up the cost of a range of goods.”

READ MORE: Rollins Slams Medicaid, Touts Healthy Food to Cut Health Care Costs—GOP Cut Both Programs

As far back as August of 2024, Trump vowed, “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”

Days later, he added, “Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.”

Fast forward to just one day before Election Day: “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper,” he promised.

READ MORE: ‘Absolute Cringe’: DHS Ridiculed After Attacking CNN Report—by Confirming It

Economists and economic experts say the Trump tariffs, a tax on certain imported goods from certain countries that are expected to jump August 1, are leading to higher prices for American consumers.

“Tariffs are starting to raise prices,” observed Heather Long, a Washington Post columnist and the chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union.

“This is just the beginning,” she added. “But we need to watch food closely. Increases there are really tough on middle class and moderate-income households.”

Long pointed to several categories of imports and listed their price jumps:

“Linens +5.9%, Oranges +4.7%, Olives +4.4%, Cookware +4%, Audio equipment +2.9%, Major appliances +2.4%, Coffee +2.2%, Sports equipment +1.8%, Toys +1.4%,” while noting that eggs are down 10.8 percent.

Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden, a former top Biden administration official, wrote simply, “Thanks for raising our cost of living with your inane tariffs @realDonaldTrump.”

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) noted, “Trump and Republicans are hurting our economy and increasing your costs.”

READ MORE: At Faith-Based Event Trump Courts Religious CEOs, Uses Expletive, Calls Dems ‘Evil’

 

Image via Reuters

 

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Rollins Slams Medicaid, Touts Healthy Food to Cut Health Care Costs—GOP Cut Both Programs

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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed Medicaid is “bankrupting” the states, while suggesting that “healthy” foods could serve to help reduce health care costs. Yet both Medicaid and nutrition programs like SNAP were slashed under President Donald Trump and Republicans’ so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law just ten days ago.

“Medicaid is bankrupting almost every state,” Secretary Rollins claimed in remarks on Monday (video below).

With the Republicans gutting over $1 trillion in federal Medicaid funds, and approximately $200 billion in SNAP funds, states face either picking up that massive shortfall or cutting some programs, benefits, or users.

Medicaid is “taking between 30, 40, 45, 50 percent of the state budgets, and has for a really long time, for those of us who come from state policy, we know this very, very well,” Rollins continued. State funds for Medicaid (not including federal matching funds) account for less than 20 percent of state budgets, overall, according to the Pew Research Center.

READ MORE: At Faith-Based Event Trump Courts Religious CEOs, Uses Expletive, Calls Dems ‘Evil’

Secretary Rollins previously served as a policy director for Texas Governor Rick Perry and led the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation. More recently, she headed the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank dedicated to advancing President Trump’s first post-presidency agenda.

Rollins decried what she says is the number one purchase using SNAP funds: “sugary drinks and junk food.”

“Frankly, we have to make a change,” she insisted.

“So there is a lot of wholesale across the government that we can do, but there’s also a recognition that a lot of these communities that are part of the Medicaid program, they don’t always have access to healthy food,” Rollins continued, not mentioning the billions the BBB Act gutted from both.

Rollins insisted the federal government has to do “a better job through our nutrition programs, through our partnerships, et cetera, of ensuring that those communities have access to healthy foods.”

“So on the back end, we have programs that are not bankrupting our government.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Dumb-Dumb’: Fox News Host Declares Rising Democrat a ‘Mental Deficient’ Amid Senate Buzz

Image via Reuters

 

 

 

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At Faith-Based Event Trump Courts Religious CEOs, Uses Expletive, Calls Dems ‘Evil’

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During a White House Faith Office event focused on renewing America “spiritually and financially,” President Donald Trump lashed out at “evil” Democrats and used an expletive while venting about his indictments and impeachments.

The meeting was attended by about 60 CEOs and business leaders who have donated to faith-based causes, in an attempt to persuade them to invest in the White House Faith Office, according to Fox News.

“White House Faith Office senior advisor Pastor Paula White, Faith Director Jenny Korn, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler will attend the event and also deliver remarks,” Fox News also reported.

READ MORE: ‘Dumb-Dumb’: Fox News Host Declares Rising Democrat a ‘Mental Deficient’ Amid Senate Buzz

Trump was “expected to explain why the White House Faith Office is so important to his agenda,” and “encourage business leaders to help the Trump administration, specifically on programs concerning foster care and adoption, fatherhood initiatives, poverty alleviation, substance abuse and prisoner reentry.”

But the President also explained (video below) “one thing” about Democrats: “they have bad policy, they’re evil people in many ways, but they stick together,” he claimed.

Trump warned that if Republicans don’t stand together “and make the economy strong…you’re gonna literally have perhaps a depression, where you people so rich, so beautiful, so nice to look at, will be totally busted. And let’s see how long your wife stays with you, your beautiful — she’ll stay with you for about three weeks and she’ll say, ‘Darling, I can’t take you anymore. I can’t take it anymore, darling, I’m leaving you’.”

The President also denounced his indictments and impeachments.

“Indicted five times, impeached two times, all b——-, right?” he told the group. “Oh, terrible stuff, and I got impeached for making a perfect phone call.”

READ MORE: ‘Like Taking a Knife to a Gunfight’: Trump’s Russia Tariffs of ‘About 100%’ Mocked

Trump also claimed that he is “getting rid of” the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision in the tax code that bans  certain non-profits, including groups like churches, from endorsing political candidates. It has never been fully enforced, and no church has ever lost its tax-exempt status solely for violations of that law.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation denounced the meeting’s agenda.

“Trump is again blurring the line between church and state,” FFRF wrote. “A president shouldn’t be rewarding CEOs for promoting religion or using public office to advance a ‘faith-centered’ agenda. Government must serve all Americans — not just the religious.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Absolute Cringe’: DHS Ridiculed After Attacking CNN Report—by Confirming It

 

 

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