The moral injury affecting caregivers in America’s hospitals and healthcare settings has only worsened in the first half of 2025. Tackling this crisis was the priority for activists from Connecticut as they joined their colleagues from across the country this summer for our national union’s annual healthcare professional issues conference (PIC). Together, they set a course for the coming year under a unifying theme of protecting patients, caring for communities and defending democracy.

Members of AFT Connecticut-affiliated local healthcare unions, as well as our state federation’s vice president and communications department staff, traveled to Chicago in mid June for the conference. They each contributed to an event focused on building power from within, amplifying strength through coalitions, exercising our rights and choosing democracy over autocracy.

“Sometimes it seems like only a small number of people are willing to be involved in making change,” said AFT Connecticut Vice President John Brady, RN (second row, sixth from left, in photo, above). “We learned that societies that have successfully pushed back on authoritarian régimes did so with an average of just 3.5% of their people actively engaged in the struggle. That shows how even a small number of dedicated people can make a difference,” added Brady, who co-chairs our national union’s healthcare program and policy council.

Brady’s comments referred to a pre-conference training session that walked activists through the mechanics of peaceful resistance – and which helped set the tone for the event. A veteran organizer who has run nonviolent‑action boot camps for social justice organizations across the country helped union members understand that mobilization is a skill anyone can master.

Theory was then turned into practice. Conference participants, wearing their AFT-branded scrubs, spilled into downtown Chicago that afternoon with handmade signs held high and joined a local protest aimed at defending vulnerable communities.

Attendees were welcomed by Chicago-based affiliate leader and national union vice president Stacey Davis Gates. She challenged activists to envision the labor movement’s work in organizing, mobilizing and negotiating as “revolutionary acts of bargaining for the common good.”

“Connecting well-being to collective action is key,” said Randi Schiavi, RN (fourth row, sixth from left, above), community outreach vice president of our affiliated University Health Professionals (UHP). “Unions and healthcare workers are on the same page about what improves someone’s life; financial security, access to quality, affordable healthcare, protected sick leave. Unions are more than a collection of benefits and financial advancement, they are the gateway to wellness by creating access to what is wrongfully withheld by corporations. Multiply our benefits by all the people in our community, and you see how we bargain for the common good,” she added.

The conference’s opening plenary featured renowned health‑policy analyst Dr. Vin Gupta on the impact of cuts to federal programs and funding for state and local services. A “know your rights” panel with advocates and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)’s former general counsel armed attendees with practical defenses against the increased criminalization of healthcare.

A plenary session brought labor leaders from across the country together to dissect recent organizing and collective bargaining victories in the healthcare sector. They told stories of ancillary staff securing voluntary union recognition and of nurses winning new contracts, both by averting a work stoppage as well as after being provoked to strike.

“The session sparked a conversation about carrying our momentum to the finish line in helping us negotiate our strongest contract to date,” said Hailey Jimenez, RN (second row, fifth from left), treasurer of our Backus Federation of Nurses. “We shared how our informational picket was a huge influence on shifting the tide at the bargaining table. It was crucial to engaging our community, putting our solidarity on full display and demonstrating a show of force that undoubtedly helped us win,” she added.

”We had the opportunity to share a fresh win of our own at the conference,” said UHP President Bill Garrity, RN (back row, sixth from left, above). “When UConn Health administrators let our current critical care recruitment and retention stipends expire, we mobilized the nearly 200 impacted nurses for a previously scheduled ‘town hall.’ Their voices were heard; management was forced to the table where we preserved the stipends for another year,” added Garrity, who also serves as AFT Connecticut’s vice president for healthcare.

National AFT President Randi Weingarten’s keynote addressed the broader challenges facing the entire labor movement, reminding attendees of the stakes for American democracy. She called on doctors, nurses and health professionals to unite with union members from all sectors against an encroaching autocracy bent on rolling back hard-won workplace rights.

The final panel featured AFT Connecticut Communications Coordinator Rosemary Rich and focused on the importance of “expert storytelling” in healthcare advocacy. She stressed how, as trusted members of the community, doctors, nurses and health professionals are uniquely positioned to be effective champions for a wide variety of policies impacting patients.

Between plenaries and speeches, workshops covered topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), advancing health equity, workplace violence prevention and immigration policy in the industry. Attendees were provided the tools for leading efforts to resolve the “Code RED” crisis afflicting the nation’s hospitals and health settings – as well as to secure a functional democracy.

Editor’s note: photo credit to Cesar Moreno Perez, AFT; additional contributions from Adrienne Coles, AFT.

The post Charting a Course to Resolve the “Code RED Crisis” first appeared on AFT Connecticut.

Multiple studies have found improved outcomes for students when resources are directed toward recruiting and retaining the education support staff they depend on. In a recent op-ed, Hartford Federation of Paraeducators President Shellye Davis (at podium in photo, above) called for overdue investments to reverse the learning crisis plaguing the capital city. She urged district officials to take appropriate action reflecting that “real respect isn’t lost in words; it’s added to the paycheck:”

Hartford is a city brimming with potential—a place where dreams are nurtured in classrooms across every neighborhood. Despite limited resources, we believe every student deserves a thriving educational ecosystem.

But we face a learning crisis—exacerbated by the pandemic and decades of chronic underinvestment—that threatens to further weaken this foundation. If we continue to ignore it, the classroom experience in both our neighborhood and magnet schools will suffer.

At this moment, Hartford is nearly 80 paraeducators short, a staggering number caused by one simple but devastating truth: the wages are not livable.

Imagine a farmer tending their field – planting the best seeds, using the finest tools, and yet forgetting the equipment needed to till the soil. Even the best seeds will fail in hardened ground. Our paraeducators are those essential tools—preparing the ground for learning, growth, and achievement.

They work side-by-side with teachers, giving one-on-one support to some of our most vulnerable students. They guide, they listen, they nurture. They are the unseen hands holding up our educational system.

Take “Maria,” a young student diagnosed with a learning disability. Her paraeducator, “Ms. Rodriguez,” didn’t just help her with tasks – she helped her believe in herself. That support was life-changing (note: names are illustrative and used to represent the real work happening in our schools).

But how long can we ask Ms. Rodriguez, and so many others like her, to give their all, while juggling second jobs, stressing over rent, or deciding between groceries and gas?

Here’s another image: a barn, strong but aging. Ignore a few cracked beams and wait too long to repair them, and a storm will collapse the entire structure. That’s what happens when we underpay paraeducators—they are the beams that hold our schools up.

This isn’t only about fairness – it’s about protecting the future of every classroom. When we pay paraeducators fairly, we keep passionate, qualified individuals who are invested in our students’ success. Students with special needs, in particular, depend on consistency and trust, which are lost with constant staff turnover.

Hartford has always been resilient. But resilience requires vision and action.

Let’s show our gratitude with action, because real respect isn’t lost in words; it’s added to the paycheck.

The time to fix the foundation is now, before the pressure on our schools turns into a break we can’t repair, and before we lose the heart of what makes education work: the people who show up every day for our kids.

The post Investing in Livable Wages to Assure Brighter Futures for All first appeared on AFT Connecticut.

Patients would likely be shocked to learn that senior managers are not held to the same professional standards as bedside caregivers in Connecticut hospitals. This disparity was called out by University Health Professionals (UHP) member Paul Banach, RN (in photo, above), in a recently published op-ed. He made a convincing argument for state lawmakers to require “hospital leadership to commit to the same ethical principles” expected of doctors, nurses and technicians:

While we hold doctors and nurses to high ethical standards to be mandated reporters and to “do no harm,” there are some hospital workers making decisions that impact patient outcomes who are not required to be licensed- hospital administrators.

We require principals, nursing home administrators, and even hairdressers to be licensed. Somehow, hospital administrators are exempt from the individual accountability that comes with holding a license, and patients in Connecticut hospitals are suffering the consequences.

The past few years we have seen many examples of what is now being referred to as “administrative harm” in healthcare. In Boston, Steward Health stopped paying their medical suppliers and a brand new mother died after giving birth because the hospital did not have basic surgical supplies to stop her from hemorrhaging.

In Connecticut, Prospect Medical paid $424 million in dividends to their shareholders and then filed for bankruptcy at Waterbury, Manchester, and Rockville hospitals. At Waterbury Hospital specifically, Yale alleges that noncompliance with basic safety standards contributed to the death of a patient.

In all of these cases, real people with names made decisions to siphon money to shareholders rather than maintain basic safety standards, putting the public at risk of harm and death. While the Department of Public Health can suspend the license of the hospital for noncompliance, none of the individuals responsible for these reckless decisions were held accountable because they don’t hold an individual license. We don’t allow doctors and nurses to hide behind the hospital’s license, and we shouldn’t allow administrators to either.

St. Francis Hospital in Hartford was founded by nuns – members of our own community who cared deeply about their neighbors, took pride in their noble work, and took home zero executive bonuses. Now, many of our hospitals are owned and operated by out-of-state actors, such as Trinity Health in Michigan and Prospect Medical in California. In order to ensure our hospitals uphold Connecticut values and prioritize patient safety over profit, it is imperative that we license the decision makers and hold them to the same safety and ethical standards as our clinicians.

A legislative proposal in the 2025 session would have created a licensure requirement for hospital administrators that would hold them liable for decisions they make, such as:

A fiscal or operational decision that causes unreasonable risk or harm to patients; An administrative or operational decision that impedes a healthcare provider from adhering to basic standards of practice; & Aiding and abetting a healthcare provider with knowledge that the provider is causing patient harm or practicing outside of their scope of practice.

Editor’s note: the specific language was removed during the proposal’s amendment process; the initiative had the support of key lawmakers who have pledged to raise it again next year.

Hospital administrative licensure is self-funding through application and renewal fees. It would protect us and our loved ones from preventable harm caused by unsafe hospital conditions. Many nurses and doctors across Connecticut support it, and they want hospital leadership to commit to the same ethical principles that we do.

Above all, do no harm.

The post Making the Case for Equitable Accountability first appeared on AFT Connecticut.