March, 02 2020, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Amirah Sequeira: asequeira@nationalnursesunited.org
or NNU communications team: press@nationalnursesunited.org
OAKLAND, Calif.
On Monday afternoon, the nation's largest union of registered nurses sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, Ambassador Deborah Birx, members of Congress, and other key officials in the administration, demanding a quick and meaningful response to the outbreak of novel coronavirus across the nation. National Nurses United, which represents more than 150,000 registered nurses across the country, called on the federal government to ensure that all health care workers receive the highest level of protection, and to act immediately to pass an emergency spending package to fully fund the response to the outbreak.
"As the nation braces to confront the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that is quickly spreading across the world, National Nurses United, the largest union for registered nurses in the United States, has been closely monitoring the situation in our hospitals," wrote the presidents of NNU, registered nurses Deborah Burger, Zenei Cortez, and Jean Ross. "It is critical that the federal government take quick and meaningful steps to urgently protect the public from this outbreak."
The letter provided detailed policy recommendations. The union urged the administration and Congress to adopt the following:
- Ensure that all nurses and health care workers receive the highest level of protection in their workplaces, as determined by the precautionary principle, which means erring on the side of safety and taking action even before you know something is unsafe.
- Improve the Centers for Disease Control screening criteria and testing capacity to ensure prompt recognition of and response to new cases.
- Promulgate an Emergency Temporary Standard through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect health care workers from emerging infectious diseases as soon as possible.
- Ensure that any vaccine or treatment that is developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars is provided to the public for free.
- Act immediately to pass an emergency spending package to fully fund the response to this outbreak, including dedicated funds for protective equipment for workers, temporary paid sick leave, and coverage of all treatment, care, and services for people with potential COVID-19 infection.
The union is currently conducting a survey of RNs to gather information on hospital preparedness to protect workers and patients from COVID-19 infections during the outbreak. The latest results of that survey will be released later this week. In the letter issued today, the NNU presidents wrote to the administration and Congress that the survey results thus far show that facilities have not been prepared to safely respond to the outbreak.
The nurse union leaders also implored the government to recognize the systemic problems in the nation's health care infrastructure. The union pointed to underfunding of critical public health infrastructure, the lack of guaranteed universal health care, and the for-profit motive in the health care industry as issues that impede the nation's ability to adequately respond to an emerging infectious disease threat.
"At the moment, we have a fragmented and broken public health infrastructure which is woefully unprepared for COVID-19," the document reads.
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.
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Internet Archive to Appeal 'Chilling' Federal Ruling Against Digital Books
"For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books," said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. "This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors."
Mar 25, 2023
Internet Archive vowed to appeal after a U.S. district court judge on Friday sided with four major publishers who sued the nonprofit for copyright infringement.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Internet Archives operated a controlled digital lending system, allowing users to digitally check out scanned copies of purchased or donated books on a one-to-one basis. As the public health crises forced school and library closures, the nonprofit launched the National Emergency Library, making 1.4 million digital books available without waitlists.
Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued Internet Archive over its lending policies in June 2020. Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York on Friday found in Hachette v. Internet Archive that the nonprofit "creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those authorized by the publishers."
A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands.
Internet Archive "argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by making books widely accessible on the Internet," the judge wrote. "But these alleged benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers."
In a statement responding to the ruling, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle pledged to keep fighting against the publishers.
"Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books," Kahle said. "This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it."
Internet Archive's supporters have shared similar warnings throughout the ongoing court battle, including after the ruling Friday.
"In a chilling ruling, a lower court judge in New York has completely disregarded the traditional rights of libraries to own and preserve books in favor of maximizing the profits of Big Media conglomerates," declared Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the digital rights group Fight for the Future.
"We applaud the Internet Archive's appeal announcement, as well as their steadfast commitment to preserving the rights of all libraries and their patrons in the digital age," they said. "And our admiration is shared—over 14,000 people having signed our pledge to defend libraries' digital rights at BattleForLibraries.com this week alone."
Holland continued:
From a basic human rights perspective, it is patently absurd to equate an e-book license issued through a surveillance-ridden Big Tech company with a digital book file that is owned and preserved by a privacy-defending nonprofit library. Currently, publishers offer no option for libraries to own and preserve digital books—leaving digital books vulnerable to unauthorized edits, censorship, or downright erasure, and leaving library patrons vulnerable to surveillance and punishment for what they read.
In a world where libraries cannot own, preserve, or control the digital books in their collections, only the most popular, bestselling authors stand to benefit—at the expense of the vast majority of authors, whose books are preserved and purchased by libraries well after publishers have stopped promoting them. Further, today a disproportionate number of traditionally marginalized and local voices are being published in digital-only format, redoubling the need for a robust regime of library preservation to ensure that these stories survive for generations to come.
A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands. No book-lover who wants an equitable and trustworthy written world could find such a future desirable. Accordingly, we plan to organize an in-person action to demand robust ownership and preservation standards for digital books and libraries. For updates on when and where, check BattleForLibraries.com.
More than 300 authors last September signed an open letter led by Fight for the Future calling out publishers and trade associations for their actions against digital libraries, including the lawsuit targeting Internet Archive.
"Libraries saved my life as a young reader, and I've seen them do as much and more for so many others," said signatory Jeff Sharlet. "At a time when libraries are at the frontlines of fascism's assault on democracy, it is of greater importance than ever for writers to stand in solidarity with librarians in defense of the right to share stories. Democracy won't survive without it."
Fellow signatory Erin Taylor asserted that "the Internet Archive is a public good. Libraries are a public good. Only the most intellectually deprived soul would value profit over mass access to literature and knowledge."
Koeltl's ruling came just two days after the American Library Association released a report revealing that in 2022, a record-breaking 2,571 titles were challenged by pro-censorship groups pushing book bans, a 38% increase from the previous year.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed the so-called Parents Bill of Rights Act, which education advocates and progressive lawmakers argue is intended to ban books and further ostracize marginalized communities.
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'Extremely Dangerous Escalation': Putin to Station Russian Nukes in Belarus
"Putin's nuclear provocations are dangerous and unacceptable. U.S. and NATO must resist calls to respond in kind and avoid injecting nuclear weapons deeper into this war," said Global Zero's Derek Johnson.
Mar 25, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on state television Saturday plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus—an escalation anti-war campaigners had been warning about and that alarmed disarmament advocates and experts.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) "condemns this extremely dangerous escalation which makes the use of nuclear weapons more likely," the group declared in a series of tweets.
"In the context of the war in Ukraine, the likelihood of miscalculation or misinterpretation is extremely high," ICAN added. "Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences."
"Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences."
The deployment decision comes 13 months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine and after the United Kingdom this week revealed plans to provide the invaded nation with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium (DU).
Putin said the U.K.'s announcement "probably served as a reason" why Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko agreed to the plan and argued that it won't violate Russia's international nonproliferation treaty obligations, according to a BBC translation.
As Reutersexplained, "The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed by the Soviet Union, says that no nuclear power can transfer nuclear weapons or technology to a nonnuclear power, but it does allow for the weapons to be deployed outside its borders but under its control—as with U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe."
The United States, which has the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal after Russia, "long ago deployed their nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe," the Russia leader noted. "We are doing the same thing that they have been doing for decades."
Russia "will not hand over" nuclear arms to Belarus, Putin insisted, explaining that his country has already given its ally an Iskander missile complex that can be equipped with weapons, plans to start training crews in early April, and aims to complete construction of a special storage facility for the nukes by the beginning of July.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and in the five years that followed, nuclear weapons based in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine were transferred to Russia—where they have remained since.
"It's a very significant move," Nikolai Sokol, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, toldReuters of the deployment decision. "Russia had always been very proud that it had no nuclear weapons outside its territory. So, now, yes, they are changing that and it's a big change."
Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project, told Reuters that "this is part of Putin's game to try to intimidate NATO... because there is no military utility from doing this in Belarus as Russia has so many of these weapons and forces inside Russia."
Global Zero managing partner Derek Johnson said that "Putin's nuclear provocations are dangerous and unacceptable. U.S. and NATO must resist calls to respond in kind and avoid injecting nuclear weapons deeper into this war."
In addition to his nuclear announcement, Putin pointed out during the Saturday interview that Russia also has depleted uranium shells. As he put it: "I must say that certainly, Russia has something to respond. Without exaggeration, we have hundreds of thousands, namely hundreds of thousands of such shells. We are not using them now."
A U.K. Ministry of Defense official had confirmed earlier this week that "alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armor-piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium," which swiftly generated concerns about not only Russian nuclear threats but also public health and environmental impacts.
"DU shells have already been implicated in thousands of unnecessary deaths from cancer and other serious illnesses," stressed Kate Hudson, general secretary of the U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has advocated for a moratorium on such arms. "Sending them into yet another war zone will not help the people of Ukraine."
This post has been updated with new comments from Derek Johnson.
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'When We Fight, We Win!': LA School Workers Secure Deal After 3-Day Strike
"The agreement addresses our key demands and sets us on a clear pathway to improving our livelihoods and securing the staffing we need to improve student services," said SEIU Local 99.
Mar 25, 2023
Union negotiators for about 30,000 school support staffers in California's Los Angeles County struck a historic deal with the second-largest district in the United States on Friday after a three-day strike.
Members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, special education assistants, teaching aides, and other school staff—backed by about 35,000 educators of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)—walked off the job on Tuesday and continued to strike through Thursday.
The tentative contract agreement, which must still be voted on by SEIU Local 99 members, was reached with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after mediation from Democratic Mayor Karen Bass.
The deal would increase the average annual salary from $25,000 to $33,000, raise wages by 30%, boost the district minimum wage to $22.52, provide a $1,000 Covid-19 pandemic bonus, secure healthcare benefits for part-time employees who work at least four hours a day, and guarantee seven hours of work for special education assistants.
"The agreement addresses our key demands and sets us on a clear pathway to improving our livelihoods and securing the staffing we need to improve student services," SEIU Local 99 said in a statement. "It was members' dedication to winning respect from the district that made this agreement possible."
The Los Angeles Times reports that during a Friday news conference at City Hall with Bass and Alberto Carvalho, the LAUSD superintendent, Local 99 executive director Max Arias declared that "here in California this agreement will set new standards, not just for Los Angeles, but the entire state."
"I want to appreciate the 30,000 members that sacrificed three days of work, despite low income, to raise the issue to society, that we as a society need to do better for all workers, all working people, for everyone," Arias added.
While the strike meant about 400,000 K-12 students weren't in classes for three days this week, "many parents stood in support of union employees," according toKTLA, with one local parent saying that "it's obvious all over the schools that we're really not putting the support where it's needed and our children are suffering because of that."
In a series of tweets, Local 99 thanked people from across the country for their solidarity this past week and stressed that the LA mayor, who has no formal authority over LAUSD, "was instrumental to getting the district to finally start hearing our demands."
Bass, in a statement, thanked Arias and Carvalho "for working together with me to put our families first" and emphasized that "we must continue working together to address our city's high cost of living, to grow opportunity, and to support more funding for LA's public schools, which are the most powerful determinant of our city's future."
Carvalho said Friday that "when we started negotiating with SEIU, we promised to deliver on three goals. We wanted to honor and elevate the dignity of our workforce and correct well-known, decadeslong inequities impacting the lowest-wage earners. We wanted to continue supporting critical services for our students. We wanted to protect the financial viability of the district for the long haul. Promises made, promises delivered."
Contract talks with district teachers are ongoing. When announcing support for Local 99's strike earlier this month, UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz said that "despite LAUSD having one of the largest school budgets and largest reserves in the nation—teachers and essential school workers are struggling to support their own families and live in the communities they work for."
The strike and pending deal in California come amid a rejuvenated labor organizing movement across the United States, with employees of major corporations including Amazon and Starbucks fighting for unions.
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