In these scary times, we are so grateful to you, our members, and all of the work that you are doing on the front lines. We continue to hear from many of you about serious concerns at St. Joseph Bellingham, including:

• Lack of access to or inappropriate use of PPE
  • Management demands to reuse masks or wear them for prolonged periods of time
  • Threats of discipline for wearing masks in patient rooms
  • Prohibited from bringing masks from home
  • Lack of proper training on donning and doffing of PPE including respirators
  • Lack of instructions how to clean and sanitize PAPRs
  • PAPRs that are degraded and tubing is broken
  • No more fit testing for N95s
• Low census as units shut down or reduce hours
• Hazard Pay
• Redeployment or floating of nurses into other different clinical areas
• Access to paid leave if a nurse is unable to work for reasons related to COVID-19

WSNA and SEIU 1199NW have been working in collaboration to address all of these concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are in the process of negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding with the hospital. We hope to have this negotiation concluded very soon.

Labor & Industries, the Division of Safety and Occupational Health has been conducting interviews with frontline staff about safety concerns. The investigation is continuing. If you want to participate or have important information to share, please email hwelander@wsna.org. If you decide you want to be part of the interviewing process, you may request confidentiality.

Please continue to share your concerns with WSNA. If you haven’t already please take a moment to fill out the COVID-19 Healthy Workplace Survey, and sign our petition and encourage everyone you know to sign it too. The more people that sign the petition the more pressure it puts on employers to do the right thing for the dedicated nurses they employ.

Hanna Welander, BSN, RN

Nurse Representative

hwelander@wsna.org

206-575-7979, Ext. 3035