Speaker: Nurses can lead fight to save public health care

By SHERRY HALBROOK
Who suffers most when public services are taken over by the private sector? The public, Candice Owley told PEF convention delegates attending the annual nurses luncheon last month in Montreal.

A registered nurse, Owley’s activism in the workplace has led her to become president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals and chair of the American Federation of Teachers Health Care Program and Policy Council.

Owley said her experiences in Wisconsin have given her a profound respect for the value of keeping public services public, especially in health care.

“The people of New York owe PEF and all of you a huge debt for saving your public hospitals in your recent budget fight,” Owley told the delegates.

“My community was so much worse off after the 130-year-old county hospital where I worked closed. Everyone could come into that hospital for medical care, whether they had insurance or not. Many people in that community are now going without care,” Owley said.

The problems arise when private corporations move in and take over services the public must have, she said, because “they see their first responsibility is to their investors, not their customers or employees.”

“When something is privatized, you don’t have a say about it any more. They don’t have to hold public hearings when they want to make changes. At least, when it’s a public (government operated) service, you have a fighting chance to save it,” she told the PEF nurses and other luncheon guests.

Owley said she finds the private sector uses an insidious strategy to gain control of public services.

First, she said, the private sector pressures government to reduce funding that supports the public services. Then, when the services become too weakened to meet the public’s needs, the private sector moves in and claims it can do the job better. Too often, the frustrated public hands over the responsibility to the corporation and then loses control and accountability.

“When I was growing up, public service was seen as noble,” Owley said. All of the people communities depended on most — nurses, social workers, postal workers, teachers and police — were public employees.

“The tide really began to turn against us in the 1970s during the Reagan presidency,” she said. “And in the ’80s, profiteers figured out that health care had become a very good industry to be in.”

When profit entered the equation, “pressure mounted on hospitals to cut costs.”

Today, Owley said, the effect of that pressure for lower costs and higher profits have created an environment where “you need to bring someone with you, when you go to the hospital as a patient, to advocate for you. You need to be afraid, especially if you are not a nurse.”

Unless labor unions, health care professionals and communities take a stand, Owley said, “We are moving to a time when only the wealthy will have a good quality of life.”

She urged the PEF delegates to follow the example of nurses in Australia, who became fed up with understaffing and mandatory overtime.

“They organized and won over staffing ratios, and better working conditions. Now, the nurses no longer have to do any manual lifting. Hospitals in Australia are required to have lifting equipment built into the patients’ rooms, usually right behind the beds.

“These are the happiest nurses I have ever met,” Owley said. “And in just a few years, their union became the most powerful union in that country.

“If they can do it, you can do it too.”

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