Hear from Workers >> Ceferina Sharpe
Ceferina Sharpe | Ceferina Sharpe
UAN
Detroit
Detroit Medical Center |
Ceferina Sharpe has been a registered nurse for 35 years. For the past 21 years, she’s worked in maternity, taking care of mothers moments after they give birth. Sharpe loves her job. As a child, she always wanted to be a nurse to take care of others. Today, however, Sharpe is concerned about understaffing at her hospital. She says, “We try to provide the best care for our patients but it’s not so easy when I am trying to hurry.” In fact, she says, “Everything at the hospital is decided by finances, not patient care.” Sharpe and her co-workers began forming a union in spring 2007. They knew being part of a union would be the best way to provide better patient care because they could say the staffing levels are dangerous without fear of retribution. They also wanted better health care for themselves and their families—the hospital-provided health care is extremely costly and they have few options to choose their own medical care. Today, management is aggressively fighting the nurses' freedom to form a union. The staff is required to attend meetings with supervisors who interrogate the nurses about their support for the union. Management illegally monitors the nurses’ activities around forming a union, using video cameras and keeping tabs on nurses who attend union meetings, according to charges filed by the union with the National Labor Relations Board. The charges also accuse the hospital of singling out and harassing nurses who are trying to exercise their freedom to form a union. Sharpe is originally from the Phillipines, where she says management respected nurses. But in the United States, “You don’t have any respect.” | 
