Vermont Workers' Center Fighting for Workers' Rights!

"Vermont's Own"

Friday March 5, 2010
http://www.benningtonbanner.com/opinion/ci_14522731

Vermont supporters of meaningful health care reform have been floating a well-tested format that deserves more than a cursory review this year. Regardless of what happens -- or doesn't happen -- in Washington, they say,
the state would fare better with its own single-payer health care option.

Any healthcare worker can tell you the truth about mandatory overtime: it is unsafe for their patients, and unsafe for themselves. We need to ensure that our health care workers are able to do their job to the best of their ability, which means keeping them healthy, and not forcing them to work grueling, extended shifts above the hard work they do every day.

* * * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE * * * February 26, 2010

BURLINGTON – Four Fletcher Allen nurses recently back from Haiti disaster relief efforts will be honored by the Healthcare Is A Human Right campaign on their float at Magic Hat's 15 Annual Mardi Gras Parade in Burlington, Saturday Feb 27th. The "Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign" is a grassroots organizing campaign aimed to change what is deemed 'politically possible' in an effort to make Vermont the first state in the country to establish the moral commitment that healthcare will be treated as a public good for every resident.

Dear Friends in Faith,

CAMPAIGN 2010: PAID SICK DAYS FOR VERMONT

Action Alert - Tell your Representatives to support Paid Sick Days - call them, write them, share with them

With 106,000 hard-working Vermonters lacking paid sick days, it is crucial to the health of our community that H.382 on Paid Sick Days gets passed. We all get sick and we all care for our loved ones who are sick. It is necessary that all Vermonters be able to take time off from work to both recover and prevent those that we work with from getting sick, while not having to worry about how our bills will get paid or how we will put food on the table.

MONTPELIER, VT - Working Vermont, a coalition of Vermont labor unions, has joined the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign in an effort to make Vermont the first state in the country to establish the moral commitment that healthcare will be treated as a public good for every resident.

MONTPELIER – Over a hundred Vermont union nurses and other healthcare professionals held a press conference calling on Vermont to lead the way in establishing healthcare as a basic public good for all Vermonters at the Statehouse today. The event is part of a growing grassroots campaign called the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, which is coordinated by the Vermont Workers’ Center. There was a live call from Haiti reporting on Vermonters disaster relief efforts as part of the press conference in addition to talking about healthcare in Vermont.

HAITI - Nurses and Technical Professionals at FAHC who are members of the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the union of 2000 members at FAHC, are organizing donations and groups of volunteers to go to Haiti in the coming days, weeks and months to help with the relief efforts.