Working Partnerships USA

We need job security for hundreds of thousands of service workers like me who have lost our jobs due to COVID-19.

When I moved to San Jose from Mexico 24 years ago, I wanted to build a stable home and a bright future for my children so they have the opportunity to study and pursue their dreams. While working as a banquet server at the DoubleTree Hotel for the last 17 years, I carefully saved up money from my hard-won earnings, and I enjoyed great health coverage that my union fought to win. In 2016, I was able to fulfill my dream of buying a home for my family – including my 12-year old son and 7-year old daughter. 

In March, my coworkers and I were laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have been told it could be until April 2021 or later that we are called back to work. Now – like so many people – I am just barely paying my bills with unemployment payments and cutting into my savings to put food on the table.

I am grateful that my children have a yard to play in, but I’m scared that if one of them gets injured or sick, I won’t be able to pay for their health care because I’ve lost the health coverage I had through my job.

I’m scared that when it’s finally safe to re-open, my employer could use the pandemic as an opportunity to discriminate against longtime workers who have dedicated years of our life to these jobs. In the hospitality industry, so many service workers are immigrant women like me who have also fought to improve conditions across our industry. 

That’s why I’m asking you to email your senator today in support of AB 3216 – a bill that would protect hundreds of thousands of service workers with the “right of recall.” If passed, it would mean that employers like the DoubleTree are required to offer jobs first to existing, longtime workers once workplaces reopen and jobs come back.

I know how to do my job best, and it is workers like me who keep our industries running. Our employers need longtime workers who know the ins and outs of our jobs to safely and successfully reopen. And knowing I have a good job to return to would be one less worry in the long list of worries I have for my family.

AB 3216 will help to ensure that as California recovers, working families like mine are not left behind. The stability and wellbeing of our families is critical for the health of our whole state.

In solidarity,

Dolores
Banquet Server at San Jose DoubleTree by Hilton
Member of UNITE HERE Local 19

Despite a massive corporate lobbying effort to kill the bill without a vote, yesterday the California Senate Labor Committee voted YES on AB 3216!

Because of your calls and emails, the “right of recall” for workers in sectors most impacted by COVID-19 now advances to a vote in the full Senate. Email your senator today to keep up the momentum on AB 3216.

The right of recall protections in AB 3216 are essential to ensure equity for workers of all ages, ethnicities, origins, and family status as we all strive together to recover from this pandemic. Our state must protect those who have lost work during this public health pandemic so we can all come back strong and healthy.

We are all stronger when everyone has what we need to care for ourselves and our loved ones during this pandemic.

But as Governor Newsom emphasized yesterday, Californians are grappling with huge disparities in access to paid sick leave, forcing far too many people to choose between losing their jobs or going to work when they are sick.

AB 3216 would address these disparties by providing universal paid sick leave and job protection during a public health emergency. It passed the State Assembly with a groundswell of worker and community support.

Now we need Senator Jerry Hill to commit to give AB 3216 a hearing in the Senate Labor Committee. If he doesn’t, the bill could die without ever getting a vote.

No worker should have to choose between paying their bills or taking care of a loved one. Our state must protect those who have lost work during this public health crisis so we can all come back strong and healthy.

COVID-19 has made so clear that healthcare workers — whether janitors, nursing assistants, registered nurses, or doctors — play a critical role in our society and economy.

Yet even as these people risk their lives to keep us healthy, they are facing major changes in their jobs as hospitals and healthcare companies introduce new technology.

Today, we’re releasing a new report with the UC Berkeley Labor Center exploring how technology — video-conference doctors visits, robots that deliver supplies and clean rooms, machine learning algorithms, and many more — could affect both the kind of care patients receive and the lives of people working in the healthcare industry.

This transformation, which is being accelerated in many ways by the COVID-19 pandemic, presents an important choice: will we allow the introduction of new technologies to undermine the quality of healthcare jobs, leaving the strengths of healthcare workers underutilized and patients underserved? Or will organizers and policymakers seize this opportunity to create better outcomes for patients, workers, and communities?

The report, written by Cornell professor Adam Seth Litwin, finds that the technologies most likely to be adopted in healthcare are unlikely to reduce the demand for healthcare jobs, but how those technologies are deployed will have significant impacts for both patients and healthcare workers:

• If we continue along the current default path — where decisions about technology are largely made by developers and hospital administrators — the healthcare industry will fail to recognize the full value that workers such as nursing assistants, orderlies, home health aides, and personal care attendants can bring. People will be asked to fill in the gaps of what technology cannot do, and both workers and patients will suffer as a result.
• Instead, we should start by asking “what are humans uniquely capable of?” and use technology to help them excel at those skills. This work-centered approach prioritizes technological change that supports skill development and improves job quality for healthcare workers. The result? High-quality, career-building jobs for healthcare workers, reduced healthcare costs, and improved access and quality of care for patients.

This research follows our previous studies looking at other sectors that are likely to be impacted by technological change: in warehouses and in trucking.

Across industries, we are starting to see a similar trend: robots and technology will not take all our jobs, but they have the potential to significantly impact the quality of jobs, particularly for low-wage workers of color.

Healthcare is one of the largest and fastest growing parts of our economy, employing 18 million people. Black and Latinx workers and women are overrepresented in these positions like nursing assistants, orderlies, home health aides, and personal care attendants, which continue to be paid low wages despite filling essential roles. And compared to other sectors, healthcare workers are more likely to have the collective voice in their jobs that comes with being members of a union.

With the right steps by policymakers, advocates, and organized workers, healthcare can thus set an important high-road model for the future of work — one where Black and Brown people and women are employed in quality, career-building jobs that play to their strengths as they continue to provide essential care.

COVID-19 has shown how brave and dedicated healthcare workers are. As both advocates and patients, we want them providing the care and human connection you’ll never get from a robot.

The well-being of healthcare workers is deeply tied to the welfare of us all. In this time of intense change, we must rally together to shape decisions that will benefit workers, patients, and communities.