Philip Daniels joins hundreds of frontline healthcare workers from across California in a rally outside Dignity Health Mercy General Hospital on Friday, Aug. 28, to support Proposition 40, which would levy a one-time tax on California billionaires.
RENÉE C. BYER
rbyer@sacbee.com
Healthcare workers from across California rallied outside Mercy General Hospital in East Sacramento Friday morning in an effort to draw attention to staffing cuts and build support for Proposition 40, the one-time, proposed 5% wealth tax on billionaires backed by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West.
Healthcare workers from multiple health systems said they believed their employers had been slow to fill vacant positions of late — and Dignity Health workers said the system had cut positions in some locations around California. They connected the situation to Medicaid cuts, and argued that Prop. 40 would help fill those funding gaps.
Andrea Tuma, a respiratory therapist with Mercy Medical Center of Redding and a member of the SEIU-UHW executive committee, said she was one of 56 people who came to Sacramento from Redding to participate in the rally.
“Healthcare should be a basic human right,” Tuma said. “If they lose that funding, those patients are still going to come to our hospitals, and we’re still going to have to feed them with less bedside workers.”
Hundreds of frontline healthcare workers from across California rally outside Dignity Health Mercy General Hospital on Friday to support Proposition 40, which would levy a one-time tax on California billionaires. RENÉE C. BYER rbyer@sacbee.com
SEIU-UHW members were in attendance from Dignity Health, Kaiser Permanente, Sharp HealthCare, Tenet Healthcare and HCA Healthcare, said union spokesperson Jennifer Kelly.
Stephanie Martinez, a medical records specialist at Dignity Health’s Memorial Hospital in Bakersfield, said the health system laid off 57 employees last month. Some found other positions within the health system, and others left. Her own hours were reduced, she said, to two days a week, from four.
Dignity Health did not directly address questions about staffing reductions Friday. The health system said in a statement that it recognized and respected its employees’ rights to participate in the rally, and hospital operations were not affected.
Hundreds of frontline healthcare workers from across California rally outside Dignity Health Mercy General Hospital on Friday in support of Proposition 40, which would levy a one-time tax on California billionaires. RENÉE C. BYER rbyer@sacbee.com
Hundreds of health care workers from across California rallied in front of the J Street hospital, lining the sidewalk on both sides of the road.
“This is how these movements start,” said Nathan Kelly, a technician for Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael. “Maybe the folks milling about here don’t know, and all of a sudden they’re going to go and Google, ‘What’s “Yes on 40?”’ And then they’re going to start educating themselves. They can start talking to their friends and family, and we can build that movement, of the millions of votes that we need to pass.”
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Annika Merrilees is a business reporter for The Sacramento Bee. She previously spent five years covering business and healthcare for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.