Last week, OFNHP delegates joined union members from across the country at the AFT National Convention, the union’s highest governing body, to help shape the direction of our national union for the coming years. From our hospitals to our schools and our public services, we are the workers who make this country run, and it's time that we are able to speak for ourselves.
The convention began with exciting news for Oregon: OFNHP President Sarina Roher was elected an AFT Vice President, giving Oregon healthcare workers a stronger voice in the national leadership of our union and a seat at the table as AFT sets its priorities for the future. She joins over forty other VPs in helping to set the national agenda for AFT, something that ensures the voices of our members will be heard loud and clear.
AFT is the second largest healthcare union in the country, and our issues were center stage as we highlighted victories, challenges, and the national staffing crisis. During a session highlighting the growing momentum behind AFT’s national Code Red campaign, nurses and healthcare professionals discussed recent victories in the fight for safe staffing, stronger patient protections and greater corporate accountability. These included safe staffing laws in Oregon, Washington and Connecticut, along with major contract and enforcement victories around the country. While Oregon's staffing law continues to be implemented, it has already highlighted exactly how severe it has become in employers like Kaiser, which currently represents a full third of staffing complaints in Oregon.
“We stand here together because of the power of our union,” Anne Goldman, co-chair of the AFT Nurses and Health Professionals Program and Policy Council, told delegates during the session.
Delegates examined the growing use of artificial intelligence in healthcare and the risks it poses to working conditions, patient care and clinical decision-making. This was of special importance to healthcare workers given that AI-assisted biotechnology is increasingly common, and useful, for many applications, as long as healthcare workers drive its development and implementation. This was at the heart of our recent contract campaign at Kaiser, where we held a national table explicitly to discuss AI and won innovative contract language to address its future. Speaking at the AFT Nurses and Health Professionals breakfast, Katie Wells, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute, warned that healthcare workers must pay close attention not only to how they use new technologies, but to how those technologies are being used to manage and monitor them.
“Today’s AI isn’t just something we use,” Wells told attendees. “It’s increasingly something being used on us.”
Our delegation also made a major impact on convention policy. OFNHP members brought 17 original resolutions covering healthcare, labor and public policy. Several were adopted as official AFT policy during the convention, while the rest advanced for further consideration. Together, they reflected the priorities of frontline healthcare workers and demonstrated the power of a member-built agenda.
The healthcare division also met to chart priorities for the coming year and discuss how delegates could help move member-written resolutions through the convention. Delegates shared organizing victories and identified strategies to strengthen staffing standards, workplace violence protections and member engagement in their own locals. As Anne Goldman reminded attendees, “In healthcare, we have to activate our voices. When we’re together, we are unstoppable.”
The work continued beyond the convention floor, as OFNHP delegates traveled to Capitol Hill and met with Senator Jeff Merkley to advocate directly for our healthcare workforce priorities.
From electing Sarina Roher to national office, to advancing policies written by our members, to bringing frontline healthcare workers’ concerns directly to Congress, the convention demonstrated OFNHP’s growing role in the national labor movement. Our members are not only fighting for better conditions in their own hospitals and clinics—they are helping shape the future of healthcare and workers’ rights across the country.
AFT national President Randi Weingarten brought everything together in her State of the Union, where she confronted the big fight we have ahead of us. From organizing in our workplace to challenging bosses and authoritarianism in Washington, our opponents are heavily resourced. But they are missing something: us. “Yes, the other side has enormous power,” said Weingarten. “But this is what they don’t have: The power of the people.”