A group of labor unions representing health-care workers across the country want the federal government to ensure workplace safety for their constituents.
Officials from the AFL-CIO; American Federation of Teachers; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Government Employees; Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Service Employees International Union; and the United Steelworkers have officially petitioned the U.S. Department of Labor to take steps toward safety by putting together a workplace violence prevention standard to protect all workers in health care and social service settings.
Representing workers in health care and social assistance, officials said there is an immediate need to address preventable and tragic workplace-related assaults and injuries.
“Workplace violence is not part of the job,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a statement. “Our health-care workers on the frontline of patient care in numerous hospitals and other settings need a strong federal OSHA standard to protect them from workplace violence and assaults.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2005 and 2014, the rates of injuries resulting in lost time for private sector health-care and social assistance facilities increased by 64 percent. Rates for private sector hospitals increased by 110 percent. Fifty-two percent of all the workplace incidents of violence reported to the bureau in 2014 came from the health-care and social assistance workforce.
“Workers should never face violence in the workplace, but for health-care workers, it’s a too-common reality,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten in a statement. “We are calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to create national employment standards so that workers have meaningful protections on the job.
Our union and our rank-and-file activists have worked tirelessly for months raising these issues and now—in collaboration with unions that represent health-care workers, including National Nurses United—to craft this proposal,” Weingarten continued. “We hope to see it enacted without delay.”
