1199SEIU Union

Q: “Agents of Change: How Allied Health Care Workers Advance Structural Competency,” (available 2019).

Abstract This case offers a "bottom up" view of the health care industry through the voices of workers essential to the industry's operations, including unskilled and semi-skilled titles. Allied health care workers are often invisible members of the health care workforce, revealing the industry's own internal hierarchies of class, race, gender and status. This case illuminates their struggles, successes and challenges to end structural inequality in the workplace as they fight to transform low-wage, exploitative jobs into dignified, fairly compensated careers. Non-clinical members of the team are essential to improving patient care and obtaining structural change. Their knowledge and insight as partners are central to new innovations in care delivery. The case concludes with four ways to forge effective ties with worker and labor organizations to deepen structural competency within health care organizations.

1199SEIU Union - Alethia Jones

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1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is the largest social justice health care union in the United States with 400,000 members in NY, FL, MA, NJ, MD and DC. I served as director of its Education and Leadership Development Department 2012-2018.

Coretta Scott King (center) and Doris Turner, president of Local 1199, marches in Charleston, South Carolina during the hospital workers 1969 strike. © Jim Tynan. For more on civil rights and unionization in hospitals, visit here

History and Impact of 1199

- Martin Luther King, Jr. speech at 1199, March 1968 – Video
- 2014 contract negotiations with Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD)
- History of 1199 – Video
- Fight for $15 Minimum Wage – Video
- 1199SEIU Nurses — Video
- Book – Upheaval in the Quiet Zone: 1199SEIU and the Politics of Healthcare Unionism

Agents of Change: How Allied Health Care Workers Advance Structural Competency,” in Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine : A Case Based Approach to Treating the Social Determinants of Health. Helena Hansen and Jonathan Metzl, eds. (Springer 2019).

Abstract

This case offers a “bottom up” view of the health care industry through the voices of workers essential to the industry’s operations, including unskilled and semi-skilled titles. Allied health care workers are often invisible members of the health care workforce, revealing the industry’s own internal hierarchies of class, race, gender and status. This case illuminates their struggles, successes and challenges to end structural inequality in the workplace as they fight to transform low-wage, exploitative jobs into dignified, fairly compensated careers. Non-clinical members of the team are essential to improving patient care and obtaining structural change. Their knowledge and insight as partners are central to new innovations in care delivery. The case concludes with four ways to forge effective ties with worker and labor organizations to deepen structural competency within health care organizations. Read the full publication here: Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine – Apr 23, 2019

Contact me to receive the full text of the article.

Education materials developed on Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court Case 2018

The Court Case Threatening Our Right to Unite at Work Video (with Spanish sub-titles)
Two Faces of Janus
Janus: What You Need to Know
Union Busting 101 (English / Spanish)
“Right to Work” Laws: A Trap for America’s Minorities 1969 (re-issued 2017), Bayard Rustin and Cesar Chavez