Earlier this month, AaNA nurses traveled to Boston to serve as delegates for our national union’s biennial convention. Attending for AaNA were Donna Phillips, Jane Erickson, Katie Shull, Sara Massmann, and Terra Colegrove, all of whom also serve on the AaNA Labor Council.
Joining 3,000 AFT union members from across the country, AaNA delegates heard from speakers including first lady Dr. Jill Biden, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, and Sandra Alvarez, director of “InHospitable”, a documentary that exposes the powerful hospitals at the heart of our broken healthcare system.
Throughout the four-day convention, delegates passed a number of resolutions, most notably “Addressing Staffing Shortages in the Healthcare Workforce”, which commits AFT to develop and implement a strategy to win state laws mandating staffing ratios or safe patient limits in at least five states by 2025. The resolution also includes actions to address workplace violence, mandatory overtime, mental health and burnout, hospital mergers, the healthcare workforce, and pandemic preparedness.
Delegates also re-elected AFT national officers, including AaNA Labor Council Chair Donna Phillips, who will continue her position on the AFT executive council as one of 46 vice presidents.
See more highlights from the convention: https://www.aft.org/convention