•   Candice Owley, chair of AFT Healthcare’s program and policy council and president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, has been appointed to a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops panel on Catholic healthcare and work. The subcommittee brings together Catholic healthcare leaders, labor and others to discuss healthcare ministry and the workplace.

•   More than 600 workers at the Resource Center, a nonprofit provider of assisted living and rehabilitation for developmentally disabled children and adults in Chautauqua County, N.Y., voted for AFT representation in March. By almost two-to-one, the community living specialists, health assistants, drivers, rehabilitation skills instructors and technicians, LPNs, maintenance specialists, mechanics, dental assistants, pharmacy technicians, transportation aides and medical aides voted to create their own union and affiliate with the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT). Their organizing began more than a year ago when the workers approached NYSUT. The center is a state-funded institution serving developmentally disabled children and adults in southwestern New York.

•   Postdoctoral fellows at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington ratified their first union agreement March 16, just seven months after voting for representation by the AFT-affiliated University Health Professionals (UHP). The new agreement includes a grievance procedure, paid leave, paid sick leave, daycare scholarships, state employee health and pension benefits, and wage increases worth about $1 million over two years. The contract provides a 27 percent increase in the minimum postdoc salary and a 6.3 percent wage increase over two years, which will raise wages across the board.

“We’re thrilled to have the postdocs join the other 1,900 members of UHP and hope that this agreement will serve as a model for postdocs everywhere,” says UHP president Jean Morningstar.

•   Donna Kosiorowski has been named New England Nurse of the Year by Nursing Spectrum Magazine. She also has been nominated for the National Nurse of the Year award. Kosiorowski, supervisor of school health services for West Haven Public Schools, is a member of the West Haven Federation of Teachers, Local 1547. This is the second award honoring Kosiorowski this year. She was selected School Nurse Administrator of the Year by the Association of School Nurses of Connecticut in February. Kosiorowski developed a mentoring program for new school nurses, and regularly encourages her nurses to specialize in areas like food allergies and computers.