SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
November, 20 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Amirah Sequeira, 240-447-0034, Chuleenan Svetvilas, 510-631-5337
House Passes Bipartisan Bill to Prevent Workplace Violence for Health Care and Social Services Workers
H.R. 1309 sets highest standards to protect workers.
WASHINGTON
Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed a groundbreaking federal bill to protect health care and social service workers from extremely high rates of workplace violence--H.R. 1309, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, authored by Rep. Joe Courtney.
The bill passed with strong bipartisan support and would set the highest standards yet for protecting workers in these industries from violence on the job. National Nurses United endorsed the bill. This legislation follows the adoption by California OSHA of the first workplace violence standard for health care workers, which was the result of state legislation sponsored by the California Nurses Association / National Nurses United.
"The U.S. House of Representatives took an historic step ... to get a vote, to finally recognize the skyrocketing, outrageous levels of workplace violence that America's good guys, the nurses, nurses assistants, physicians, the social workers are facing every single day," said Rep. Courtney at today's press conference after the vote. "H.R. 1309, the Workplace Violence Preventio for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act just passed by a wide bipartisan margin of 251 to 159. ... The evidence is overwhelming, and the severity of the problem is absolutely sickening and gut-wrenching."
"This legislation will hold our employers accountable, through federal OSHA, for having a prevention plan in place to stop workplace violence before it occurs," Zenei Cortez, RN, president, National Nurses United. "This is literally a life or death issue. Every moment we wait puts lives in jeopardy. We all deserve to feel safe in hospitals, clinics and social service settings, which should be places of healing."
"Our health care and social services workers deserve to work in an environment free from workplace violence," said Senator Baldwin, ranking member of the Senate Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee. "I'm proud to see this important effort pass the House of Representatives so we can provide overdue protections and safety standards to a workforce that serves people during some of their most vulnerable moments. This bill promotes a healthy environment that is good for both workers and those they serve, so we all need to work together to take action and pass this legislation in the Senate."
What H.R. 1309 does:
- Addresses an epidemic of violence: Workers in the health care and social assistance industry face extremely high rates of workplace violence. Between 2011 and 2016, as reported in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, at least 58 hospital workers died as a result of violence in their workplaces. In 2016, the Government Accountability Office found that health care workers at inpatient facilities were 5 to 12 times more likely to experience nonfatal workplace violence than workers overall.
- Requires federal OSHA to create a federal workplace violence prevention standard mandating employers develop comprehensive, workplace-specific plans to prevent violence before it happens.
- Covers a wide variety of workplaces, including hospitals, residential treatment facilities, non-residential treatment settings, medical treatment or social service settings in correctional or detention facilities, psychiatric treatment facilities, substance use disorder treatment centers, community care settings such as group homes and mental health clinics, and federal health care facilities such as those operated by the Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service, as well as field work settings such as home care and home-based hospice, and emergency services and transport services.
- Sets a quick timeline on implementation to ensure timely protection for healthcare workers.
- Sets minimum requirements for the standard and for employers' workplace violence prevention plans, based on the groundbreaking California legislation. These requirements include unit-specific assessments and implementation of prevention measures, including physical changes to the environment, staffing for patient care and security, employee involvement in all steps of the plan, hands on training, robust record keeping requirements including a violent incident log, protections for employees to report WPV to their employer and law enforcement, among other requirements.
National Nurses United, with close to 185,000 members in every state, is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in US history.
(240) 235-2000LATEST NEWS
State Department Pushes Human Rights Watchdog to Ignore Deadly, Illegal Boat Strike Campaign
As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was advised not to investigate the bombings, Pentagon officials expressed support for strikes on land, ostensibly against drug traffickers.
Apr 14, 2026
The former president of a top international human rights watchdog views the United States' monthslong campaign of bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean as a clear-cut case of "murder," he told The Intercept Monday, but he warned that pressure from the Trump administration may stop the body from investigating the Pentagon's actions.
Juan Méndez, a former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, noted that a month after the IACHR held a hearing on the boat bombing campaign, officials "may well feel that this is a very delicate situation, and if they take the initiative, they’re going to incur the wrath of the United States."
The hearing last month was the first of its kind and included testimonies from the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, International Crisis Group, and Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. The groups presented evidence that the US has been violating both domestic and international law by bombing vessels that it has claimed—without making any evidence publicly available—are involved in drug trafficking. Nearly 170 people have been killed in dozens of strikes, and legal experts worldwide have asserted the US is violating international law and has committed extrajudicial killings—potentially making those involved in the strikes liable for murder.
The hearing was followed by a statement from Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesperson, who said the IACHR had "strayed far outside its mandate” by looking into the boat attacks—as the family of one man killed in a bombing requested it to—and accused the ACLU of trying to manipulate the body.
"The United States calls on the commission to adhere to its statute and rules of procedure in the future and avoid inserting itself into matters that are in active domestic litigation and fall outside the human rights sphere," said Pigott. "Convening hearings under these circumstances risks undermining—not strengthening—the credibility of the inter-American human rights system."
Pigott also called on the commission to "redirect its focus toward the individual petitions languishing on its docket, sometimes for decades." He did not mention specific petitions or issues the IACHR should focus on.
Carl Anderson, a legal adviser at the State Department, also rebuked the commission for holding the proceedings.
"If the United States cuts the funding, they probably would have to shut down—at least for a while.”
A person with close ties to the IACHR told The Intercept that Pigott's demand that the commission focus on other topics pointed to a pressure campaign aimed at stoking fear that the IACHR could lose its funding.
President Donald Trump's zeroed out US contributions to the commission during his first term in 2018, and withdrew some funding the following year due to its support for abortion rights. The administration terminated funding last year for at least 22 programs under the IACHR's parent body, the Organization of American States, of which the US is the largest international funder.
“They are stretched for funding," Méndez told The Intercept. "And if the United States cuts the funding, they probably would have to shut down—at least for a while.”
Stuardo Ralón, the IACHR's current president, denied that there is "pressure from the United States on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights," but suggested it may not conduct a comprehensive investigation into the Trump administration's boat bombings—saying the body "does not conduct investigations."
The Intercept noted that the IACHR has conducted numerous investigations that it has publicly acknowledged and described as such, including into US immigration detention centers and the kidnapping and apparent killing of 43 students in Mexico in 2014.
Ralón told the outlet that it has not yet taken any steps to launch an investigation into the strikes following the hearing, and said it "will continue to monitor the situation in accordance with its mandate."
Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, emphasized that "the commission is within its competency and its bounds to fully investigate the egregious violations of international law happening in its own backyard.”
“We have asked the commission to fulfill its responsibilities as the premier regional human rights body to conduct a fact-finding investigation of these heinous killings," Dakwar told The Intercept, "and to ensure that no country can act in this fashion because that will have severe implications on human rights in the region and beyond."
As the State Department has pushed the IACHR away from probing the legality of the boat bombings, administration officials like Joseph Humire, acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, have warned that the attacks at sea are "just the beginning" of what officials claim is an effort to defeat drug cartels—against which Congress has not authorized any military action.
US Southern Command announced a joint ground operation with Ecuador last month to defeat "narco-terrorists."
Humire said the Pentagon supports "joint land strikes," while Gen. Francis Donovan, the head of US Southern Command who has been directing the boat attacks, told the Senate Armed Service Committee that the Pentagon is moving toward "a counter-cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network."
"I believe," he said, "these kinetic [boat] strikes are just one small part of that.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Harvard Expert Says She Is 'Certain' Price Tag of Trump's Illegal Iran War Will Hit $1 Trillion
"The interest costs alone will add billions of dollars to the total cost of this war," said Linda Bilmes. "And unlike the upfront costs, these are costs we are explicitly passing on to the next generation."
Apr 14, 2026
A Harvard expert who specializes in looking beyond official government estimates to calculate the true financial cost of US wars has said she is "certain" the price tag of President Donald Trump's assault on Iran will eventually reach at least $1 trillion, once benefits for troops, replenishment of munition stockpiles, borrowing costs, and other factors are fully taken into account.
“We are borrowing to finance this war at higher rates, on top of a much larger debt base,” Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in a recent interview. "The result is that the interest costs alone will add billions of dollars to the total cost of this war. And unlike the upfront costs, these are costs we are explicitly passing on to the next generation."
Bilmes, who co-authored The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict with Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, estimates that the first several days of the US-Israeli assault on Iran cost American taxpayers at least $16 billion—significantly more than the Pentagon's official figure, $11.3 billion.
"The short-term costs are even higher than they appear," Bilmes emphasized. "The Pentagon reports costs based on the historical value of inventory, instead of the actual cost it takes to replace what we are using. And those replacement costs are far higher."
Bilmes also pointed to the substantial costs of "large, multi-year contracts" the Trump administration has inked with arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin.
Over the long-term, said Bilmes, the cost of veterans' care will be massive. "We now have roughly 55,000 US troops deployed in this conflict who have been exposed to toxins, contaminants, and environmental hazards, such as burning fuel and chemical residues that we know can cause long-term harm," she noted. "If even one-third of the 55,000 troops deployed today claim benefits, then we are committing ourselves to tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in disability and medical care costs for this cohort alone."
"I am certain we will spend $1 trillion for the Iran war," Bilmes said. "Perhaps we have already racked up that amount."
The Trump administration is expected to request that Congress approve between $80 billion and $100 billion in funding for the Iran war, according to The Washington Post. Earlier this month, the Trump White House released a budget proposal that called for $1.5 trillion in military spending next fiscal year.
Bilmes noted that if Trump's request is fully enacted, US military spending would rise "to levels about 20% higher than the peak reached during World War Two."
"This raises the baseline," Bilmes said. "Even if Congress does not agree to approve the full increase, it is highly likely that at least $100 billion per year will be added to the base defense budget that would not have been approved in the absence of this war."
"And once that increase is built into the base," she added, "it raises the baseline and compounds—so an additional $100 billion per year is $1 trillion over the next decade."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Watch Live: Naomi Klein, Bernie Sanders, and Ro Khanna Roundtable Explores Future of AI and Robotics
"AI is the most far-reaching and pivotal technological revolution in the history of humanity," notes the Sanders Institute. "The choices we make now will determine whether those changes make the world better or worse."
Apr 14, 2026
The Sanders Institute is hosting Sen. Bernie Sanders, Congressman Ro Khanna, and author and filmmaker Naomi Klein on Tuesday afternoon for a livestreamed discussion designed to explore "the progressive vision for artificial intelligence and robotics, and where we go from here."
Khanna (D-Calif.) and Klein are both fellows at the institute, cofounded by Sanders' (I-Vt.) wife and son, Jane O'Meara Sanders and David Driscoll. The Sanders Institute over recent years has convened an array of conferences and events focused on bringing together the best minds, top experts, and policy advocates on a host of issues.
Tuesday's event on AI, scheduled to kick off at 3:00 pm ET, can be viewed at the stream below:
"AI is the most far-reaching and pivotal technological revolution in the history of humanity. It will impact every man, woman, and child in this country and around the globe. It has the potential to reshape the world," notes the Sanders Institute. "The future is not inevitable—and the choices we make now will determine whether those changes make the world better or worse."
"The US Congress is totally unprepared to deal with the consequences," the institute warns. "It is vitally important that we have a serious discussion of how we protect workers, how we protect our privacy, how we protect the health of our children, how we preserve our planet, and how we address the real possibility that AI can become smarter than humans and escape from human control."
Khanna, a potential 2028 presidential candidate who authored the book Progressive Capitalism: How to Make Tech Work for All of Us, has been a leading voice in the US House of Representatives on the issue of AI. In a 2024 New York Times op-ed, Khanna argued that it's vital to ensure that the future of AI and other evolving technologies "center the dignity and economic security of working-class Americans."
Meanwhile, Sanders, who recently introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), highlighted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month that billionaires are already "investing enormous sums in AI and robotics not to improve life for working families but to expand their own wealth and power."
Klein has similarly sounded the alarm about far-right tech oligarchs, including in a "must-read" essay with Astra Taylor about the fight against "end times fascism" published by The Guardian last year. The pair plans to release a related book in September.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular