SEIU President Henry: Trump administration, corporations must act immediately to provide lifesaving personal protective equipment to healthcare workers on the frontlines fighting coronavirus

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

WASHINGTON — “Protecting all workers is the patriotic and moral requirement of this moment,” SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry told U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a letter issuing an urgent call to action for the Trump administration and corporations to prioritize the health, safety, and long term economic well-being of America’s workers during the COVID-19 crisis.

Frontline healthcare workers are at the epicenter of the fighting coronavirus in our country’s hospitals, nursing homes, care facilities and client homes. Providing direct, hands-on care, dedicated caregivers — nurses, doctors, healthcare, home care and nursing home workers — face an increased risk of contracting or spreading illnesses. Every day, healthcare workers are putting their lives on the line, and SEIU is calling on this administration to enact the following solutions to immediately act to increase the supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including:

• Immediate distribution of the masks and equipment held in the Strategic National Stockpile.  
• Identifying reserves of masks/equipment in other industries, such as construction, and redistributing them to healthcare providers.
• Using all powers of the federal government to speed immediate production of new equipment and ensure it is routed to states for distribution across acute care, home care and long term care settings. This process should be transparent for healthcare workers and healthcare employers.
• Ensuring that all frontline healthcare workers across all settings and emergency response workers can be tested easily to slow the spread of the virus.
• And providing emergency relief for states to hire and train healthcare workers and first responders, and expand healthcare, long term care, and child care coverage.

Henry’s letter is part of a union-wide call on leading industries — from airlines to hospitals to fast-food and beyond — to #ProtectAllWorkers by taking immediate, sweeping action to secure the health, safety and long term economic well-being of working people across America, regardless of where they work, their race, their immigration status or current healthcare coverage. 

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The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) unites 2 million diverse members in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. SEIU members working in the healthcare industry, in the public sector and in property services believe in the power of joining together on the job to win higher wages and benefits and to create better communities while fighting for a more just society and an economy that works for all of us, not just corporations and the wealthy.