Workplace violence against nurses has significantly increased in the past decade or so, with some studies suggesting a 110% spike in the rate of violent injuries against healthcare workers in the last 10 years.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), there are 4 types of workplace violence in the healthcare field:

• Type I: The perpetrator has criminal intent and has no relationship to the business or its employees
• Type II: A customer, client, or patient becomes violent when receiving care or services
• Type III: employee-to-employee violence
• Type IV: Personal relationship violence

WHY LABOR UNIONS ARE INCREASING INFLUENCE

As negotiations entered their second month, Mike Pietros felt his optimism fade and his anger build. Pietros, fifty-three, had worked for Stop and Shop since 1998, when he was hired as a part-time meat cutter who floated from store to store. In twenty-one years, the North Providence resident had worked his way up to a meat manager’s position at the Cumberland store, and he now sat on the bargaining team for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union hammering out the terms of the next contract.

The grocery chain’s corporate parent, Ahold Delhaize, had posted a $2 billion profit in 2018, but its offers were paltry. The Netherlands-based company had proposed a small wage increase, but also a rise in workers’ health care premiums, and reductions to holiday pay and to pension benefits for new full-timers. The UFCW saw this fundamentally as a pay cut, and an attempt to create a two-tiered employee system. By the time the old contract expired on February 23, their respective positions had hardened.

https://www.rimonthly.com/labor-unions-increasing-influence/

The OPEIU Free College program is excited to offer new courses for Fall 2019 to OPEIU members and their dependents. Through the program, you can now earn an associate's degree in an array of fields, including Professional Office Management.

Family of OPEIU members are defined as children/stepchildren, grandchildren/step-grandchildren, spouses, domestic partners, financial independents and now parents, siblings, and sons and/or daughters-in-law are qualified as well.

Start the Fall right by making your education a top priority. The Fall 2019 semester enrollment ends Aug. 19.

Complete information and enrollment details are available at FreeCollege.OPEIU.org or by calling 888-590-9009.

Canadian members, please contact Luis Rosa at lrosa@EGCC.edu.

Fourteen employees of the ACLU of Maryland joined the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 2 on July 31, 2019. The unit, comprised of organizers, attorneys, legal fellows and assistants, and policy specialists spent nine long months building up power and support for the union before they finally won an election with the American Arbitration Association (AAA) the last day of July. The recognition agreement with management and the AAA allowed the unit to technically be voluntarily recognized, albeit through an election.

The ACLU of Maryland is an affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union, a progressive nonprofit that works to preserve and maintain individual freedoms. Staff routinely expressed how important it is for an organization with such dedication to civil liberties to support an employee union, noting, as the ACLU has on their own website, “Collective bargaining statutes provide critical and necessary protection for workers who exercise basic civil rights, in particular, the rights of speech, association, and petition. Efforts to strip workers of these protections have no place in our democracy.”