Union focuses on AIDS, rights of health workers

AFT Healthcare was among 14 public sector unions from around the world that met in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in July to take part in a project on women and international migration in the health sector sponsored by Public Services International (PSI), the international body for public sector unions.

The project seeks to combat exploitative and discriminatory recruitment and employment practices in the healthcare sector. AFT Healthcare and the other PSI unions came together to establish a program to educate healthcare workers from developing countries, who are being recruited to work in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, about their rights in the workplace and their rights as immigrants.

“The U.S. relies on foreign nurses. We want to make sure that those nurses are educated about their rights,” says Joni Tanaciev, assistant director for AFT Healthcare.

The unions also want to strengthen cooperation among unions in countries that send and receive migrant healthcare workers. Part of that cooperation would include an effort by the unions to educate healthcare workers before they migrate to another country.

In other news, AFT Healthcare program and policy council member Jean Morningstar, also president of the University Health Professionals in Farmington, Conn., traveled to Russia with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in June to discuss with labor leaders there what can be done to educate workers and alleviate HIV/AIDS.

For several years now, the AFT has been involved in the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign. This campaign has been a multi-year, multi-country project of the AFT Educational Foundation (AFTEF) to raise resources for African teacher unions for AIDS prevention, counseling and care for their members.

The Solidarity Center is using its expertise in securing worker rights to build an international trade union response to HIV and AIDS.

While in Russia, Morningstar and other union reps met with the Urals Trade Union, the Education Center for Trade Unions of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of the Sverdlovsk Oblast, Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS, and  the International Labour Organisation.

There is a tremendous concern about the inability to stop the spread of this disease because of limited funding for prevention of medical errors in hospitals where patients seek treatment.

Many Russian health workers “don’t understand the risks of AIDS.” says Morningstar. “They are where we were in the early ’80s.”

“Money is the biggest problem they have to overcome,” says Morningstar. “There are many people from a variety of organizations that want to do something, but they don’t know where to start and they lack the funds. AFT and other unions can be very helpful to the Solidarity Center in educating these groups and giving them the benefit of our experience.”