by Candice Owley

Our unseen union heroes 

"Proud To Be Union." If you hang around the labor movement for any length of time, it's a phrase you'll see on buttons and hats and T-shirts and coffee mugs. It is something we say, or wear, or slap on a bumper-sticker, just like "God Bless America" used to be something we sang primarily on the Fourth of July.

September 11 changed a lot of things, and one of those things is the meaning of that taken-for-granted phrase "proud to be union." In the past weeks, our union sisters and brothers have indeed done us proud.

On television, union faces were usually those of New York's heroic firefighters and police, and the untiring ironworkers who aided the rescue effort. But, as this Healthwire demonstrates, there were many other unseen union members who did more than their parts on Sept. 11 and afterwards.

You'll read in this issue about union nurses, EMTs and psychologists who risked their safety at Ground Zero; about union nurses and technicians who put in long shifts at blood donation centers. You'll read about union health professionals who rushed to care for the burn victims of the Pentagon attack and about union teachers and school employees who shepherded children to safety. We also remember, with great sorrow, our union sisters and brothers who didn't live to complete their work. Among them were three Washington Teachers Union/AFT members killed in the Pentagon crash. Also lost in the World Trade Center attacks were 34 members of the New York State Public Employees Federation/AFT who worked for the state's Tax and Finance Department and the state Transportation Department.

As a nurse, one of the saddest aspects of the September tragedies included stories of health care workers who waited in vain for patients to arrive. "The feeling that they had left a job undone" is how one counselor in our cover story describes the disappointment that gripped health care providers who stood on alert, hoping survivors were on the way.

If you were too far away to help or near enough but unable to use your skills because patients never came, maybe you felt as if you didn't "count" in the many acts of bravery following the attacks. But what we do does matter in the larger fight against terrorism. "Proud to be union" means both the heroes of Sept. 11 and the heroes of the everyday life of a hospital unit, school clinic, nursing home or visiting nurse service. What is the opposite of terrorism? It's what you do every day. It's the way you answer the hate and violence of terrorism by living lives that embody compassion and healing and the democratic freedoms.

Soon this Critical Issues column will be written by AFT president Sandra Feldman. The change is just one more way in which we're trying to amplify the connection between AFT Healthcare and the AFT as a whole. As for me, I will miss writing these "letters" to you every month but will remain thoroughly engaged in my role as chair of the AFT Healthcare program and policy council. With a new awareness of the meaning behind the phrase, I thank you, the members of AFT Healthcare, for making me forever "proud to be union."