Unions:​ ​A​ ​solution​ ​to​ ​our​ ​rigged​ ​economy

OP-ED

Unions:​ ​A​ ​solution​ ​to​ ​our​ ​rigged​ ​economy

One of my first memories about Holy Cross Hospital, where I’ve worked for the last twenty years, is hearing my parents talk about how the hospital turned away Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was injured marching against racism here in Chicago. That memory sits beside ones of being chased home from elementary school practically every day by adults and children, some in Klan-robes.

Despite these memories, I came back to the area to work at Holy Cross in 1997, because I believed I could help make change. And while demographics have helped shift racial attitudes, the hospital still treats its overwhelmingly black workforce poorly. After 20 years of dedicated service to my hospital, I still barely make $13 an hour. I know that the value of my work is worth more.

As an African-American woman, I cannot disassociate my hospital administration’s apparent indifference to my plight with the fact that these low wage jobs are held primarily by women of color. But I also know that this problem is bigger than a single hospital. The union jobs that helped African Americans gain access to the middle class are disappearing.

Politicians should be trying to fix this broken system, but they’re making it worse. Gov. Bruce Rauner is doing everything he can to take away the rights of workers and will not speak out forcefully against attempts by Republicans in Congress to dismantle the Affordable Care Act – which would take healthcare away from millions and could eliminate my job and thousands of others.

Workers must unite to stand up against rich politicians like Gov. Rauner who uses his wealth to hold others in his party hostage to his anti-worker agenda. We must stand against hospital CEOs who would drive every penny possible to profits rather than make sure workers have the equipment and staff needed to give the best care possible.

Those CEOs fill the campaign coffers of politicians who do their bidding. I will work very hard from now until election day next year to organize voters to get rid of politicians who do not support union rights and a $15 minimum wage.

That’s why I will stand with thousands of other workers on Labor Day at the American Hospital Association in a massive demonstration for racial and economic justice and to demand unions as a solution to fixing an economy that robs the poor and gives to the rich.

If workers do not unite and raise our voices to the injustices we experience on our jobs, we will watch the roll back of the benefits unions have won for workers, such as the lunch break, paid vacation and sick leave.

There is a quote by Dr. King that I treasure. He said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” On Labor Day, hospital workers will unite to tilt the scale toward justice through forming unions.

(Chanel Noble is a hospital worker who lives in Chicago.)

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