Healthcare (& ALL) Workers

⭐ Unemployment Insurance & Healthcare for Striking Workers (Sen. Riccelli)

We know that going on strike is a last resort, and can force us into tenuous choices

like losing income to gain safety and respect in the workplace. These are the kind of choices that benefit the boss, and one of them is the threat of us losing out healthcare while on strike. Not anymore – we fought and won to make sure that any worker on strike who loses their employer healthcare can continue their coverage through a State health plan.

⭐ Montana Right to Work Fight Back

Bad employers – not workers and their unions – are what make poor workplaces, and Right to Work legislation weakens our rights to a union. In 2025 , we fought back (again) and won (again!!) to preserve the rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain in Montana. 

⭐ Mandatory OT Protections for Frontline Healthcare Workers (HB 2061/Rep. Bronoske)

ALL frontline hospital workers in Washington are now entitled to mandatory overtime protections. We know our patients cannot receive quality care when we are forced to work through dangerous exhaustion. Abusive mandatory overtime risks medical errors and healthcare worker burnout which are both costly and harmful to patients.

Before 2024, only *some* healthcare had a right to these protections. This year, we fought and won these protections for all frontline hospital workers.

⭐ Regulating Employers to Prevent Musculoskeletal Injuries (SB 5217/Sen. Dhingra)

Our union’s EVS and janitorial workers led the labor movement to fight for and win legislation to protect ALL workers’ bodies from repetitive stress injuries. Too often, employers don’t treat us or our bodies with respect and these repetitive stress injuries mean weeks or months off the job, even ending our careers 

altogether. These conditions

account for about a third of all time-loss workers’ compensation claims and workers who suffer these injuries are more likely to suffer opioid use and abuse,

bankruptcy and even divorce.

Now, L&I will be able to regulate industries that have the highest rates of musculoskeletal injuries — including healthcare — so that we are preventing injuries from ever happening, not just treating them after the fact.

After surviving a nine-hour Republican filibuster in the House and being denied a floor vote in the Senate in 2022, we came together with EVS workers to win in 2023.

⭐ Safe Staffing in our Hospitals (Sen. June Robinson & Rep. Marcus Riccelli)

We have faced the crisis of hospital worker recruitment and retention for years, and we know the pandemic pushed our long-standing staffing problems to a breaking point.

Hospital executives repeatedly failed to prioritize recruitment and retention before this crisis, which is why we’ve fought in our contracts across our union for safe staffing.

Last year, our safe staffing legislation

passed the House with a strong bipartisan vote but failed to pass the Senate. This year, we are asking lawmakers to stand with healthcare workers and finish the job so we can do ours: keeping our patients safe.

• Strengthen accountability to hospital staffing plans set by staffing committees.
• Eliminate CEO veto power over those plans.
• Expand staffing committees to include LPNs, CNAs, and other direct patient care staff in addition to RNs.
• Ensure unions get to select our representatives on staffing committees.
• Create uniform reporting forms, which will mean that patients and healthcare workers will easily understand how many staff should be present.
• Require hospitals to report noncompliance to the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) Allow DOH to issue corrective action plans that could require minimum staffing standards and fines.
• Expand meal and rest break laws to include all frontline staff.
• Close loopholes to make mandatory overtime laws fully enforceable.
• Allow L&I to issue escalating penalties for missed breaks.
• Funds the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to conduct a study of existing staffing plans.

⭐ Fair & Fully Funded State Contracts

We organized and negotiated state contracts that value our work, and improve our recruitment and retention. And we fought and won to get our DSHS/DOH/DCYF/UW HH contracts fully funded in the state budget.

⭐ RN PTSD Presumptive Coverage

Similar to fire fighters, nurses can now receive Washington’s workers compensation benefits following a PTSD diagnosis. Nurses on the frontline throughout the pandemic were repeatedly exposed to trauma while under-staffed and over-worked. And even before the pandemic, we know many of us and our coworkers have suffered from repeated workplace trauma and moral injury.

Our union won a presumptive standard that a nurse’s PTSD diagnosis is both caused by traumatic exposure on the job AND is a compensable occupational disease. This will help get treatment and workplace interventions for those who are impacted, and motivate employers to put better policies in place to prevent trauma in the first place.

⭐ Protecting the Harborview Bond – State authorization for flexible levy (HB 2348/Rep. Street) & won levy passage at King County Council

Three years ago, we campaigned and won over 77% of King County voters to approve a $1.7 billion bond package for seismic upgrades, additional bed capacity and expansion of Harborview’s behavioral health and respite services. But because of high inflation, critical projects have been put at risk of delay, and we know our patients, our community, and those of us who work at Harborview cannot afford delays. That’s why we worked with the Legislature to grant King County the authority to use an existing tax to help cover the gap in capital and operating dollars.

⭐ Passed the King County Crisis Care Levy

With the number of mental health beds plummeting across our county, we partnered with our allies on King County Council, put the Crisis Care Centers Initiative on the ballot and won. Now, five crisis care centers, hundreds of residential treatment beds and investments in our community behavioral health workforce are coming online – providing our communities AND behavioral health workers the places and resources to succeed.

⭐ Kept DSHS Workers PSER’s Retirement

Those of us who care for those in our State psychiatric hospitals face many of the same risks as public safety workers, and deserve the same protections and benefits. Which is why we organized to remove dangerous language from the WA budget so we can keep our access to the PSER’s retirement system

⭐ Protecting ALL Workers from Pay Discrimination (HB 1905/Rep. Mena) 

Washington State has had equal pay protections on the books for several years, but to date it has focused on the gender pay gap. But we know that women of color face even more disproportionate pay inequity, as do many other protected classes.

In 2024, we modernized our laws to ensure that the racial pay gap is closed in order to address racism in our workplaces and the long pattern of wealth inequality for Black people and people of color. Now Washington can do better for every worker by modernizing our law to cover ALL protected classes—gender, race, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disability status, immigration status and more.

⭐ Automatic Voiding of Medical Debt when hospitals/providers send to credit agencies

⭐Preserving Workers’ Rights in Compelled Medical Exams (HB 1068/Rep. Bronoske)

Workers now have a right to record any medical exams compelled by employers and third parties to receive workers compensation benefits. Previously, injured workers were fighting legal cases around their workplace injury while doctors who tilted toward employers were evaluating their injury with little transparency. Now workers can have witnesses and recordings to make sure that any medical evaluation is transparent and valid in their case.

⭐ Regulating Third Party Administrators – require Good Faith & Fair Dealing handling our workers comp claims

⭐ No More Mandatory Employer Union-Busting Meetings (SB 5632/Sen. Keiser)

It takes courage to fight for a better, more fair workplace by joining together with coworkers in a union. And we know the boss will do everything they can to keep us divided. One tactic they use to compel workers to attend coercive captive audience meetings while workers are organizing, where the boss threatens employees and tells them how they should vote.

Now, the Employee Free Choice Act ensures workers who refuse to join these meetings are protected from retaliation or termination, and employers have one less tool to keep us divided.

⭐ Protecting Right to Privacy for Union-Delegate-Member Communications

The right to privacy in our communications with union delegates and organizers is now Washington State law.

A bad judicial decision left communications and records between our union organizers, delegates and members open to subpoena and potentially weaponized by employers in court cases. This could have had a major chilling effect on the many conversations we need to have on grievances, workplace issues and more. Now, our communications – by law — are similar to attorney-client privilege.

⭐ “WA Cares” Long Term Care Insurance for All Washingtonians

⭐ Paid Family Medical Leave for All Washingtonians

⭐ First in the Country Public Option: Cascade Care + expansion to cover more Washingtonians 

⭐ Making it Easier to Organize a Public Sector Union (SB 6060/Sen. Nguyen)

We made more gains in making it easier to organize and form a union in our state — state workers now have the same ability as those in the private sector to sign an electronic card to organize their union, meaning a little more fairness for state workers who want to organize, especially in today’s hybrid and remote workplaces.