The following statement can be attributed to HPAE President Debbie White, RN: 

Healthcare corporations are quick to hail frontline healthcare workers as heroes but often fall short when it comes to actually treating the workers with the dignity and respect that they deserve on the job. On Friday, a majority of healthcare workers on the COVID-19 frontlines at HMH Jersey Shore University Medical Center have exercised their fundamental right to have a voice in the workplace. Service and lab workers filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a certification election. They want to form a union with HPAE, New Jersey’s largest union of registered nurses and health care professionals.

These lab technicians, housekeepers, patient care technicians, food service and catering workers, lab assistants, pharmacy technicians, unit secretaries and distribution and phlebotomists, and transporters are fighting for better wages, benefits and rights in the workplace. Some of these workers, despite serving on the frontlines, do not get proper personal protective equipment or training that would keep them safe from becoming infected.

That is why HPAE is putting its full support behind the admirable efforts by these workers to advocate for themselves, their families and their patients.