Alan Lubin handed out homework at NYSUT's recent Professional Issues Forum on Health Care.

The assignments from NYSUT's executive vice president and legislative leader:

• Keep your members informed about issues affecting the health care profession, and let members know what they can do to help.
• Bring your local legislator to your work site, "where they can see the value of a defibrillator."
• Bring a local legislator to a union function.
• "Agitate, educate, get them to legislate."
• Come back to Albany on June 2 for the health care rally and lobby day.

"Stop the excuse-makers," said Anne Goldman, special nurse representative to the United Federation of Teachers and chair of NYSUT's Health Care Professionals Council.

"Bring them information."

Goldman said many lawmakers were led to believe hospitals would not be able to properly staff units if mandatory overtime was eliminated.

"That was a myth," she said. "We're talking about scheduling."

After a protracted struggle, NYSUT and its members last year won approval of a bill eliminating mandatory overtime for hospital nurses.

The measure is to help assure the health and safety of nurses and patients, and encourage others to join the profession.

Goldman recalled how "the collective voice" was responsible for a transformation at Staten Island Hospital, which fought the UFT eight years to stop the unionization of nurses.

After a battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the hospital nurses were finally able to join the UFT Federation of Nurses in 1994.

Fast-forward to last month, when, Goldman said, hospital managers and officers dealing with nurses were required to attend a class given by Goldman and chapter president Nancy Barth Miller for a page-by-page review of properly providing staff-patient ratios as spelled out in the union contract.

The nurse call system was redesigned between two different units to evenly distribute ratios.

"The same people who tripped me now pull out the chair for me," Goldman said.

Several hundred professionals, ranging from school and hospital nurses, respiratory and physical therapists, to school counselors, social workers and psychologists, attended the NYSUT forum for educational workshops and classes.

NYSUT Vice President Kathleen Donahue, whose office oversees health care issues for the union, told participants, "As the demands increase on your professions, it is vital that we maintain and protect the scope of practice for all those we represent in the health care professions. Efforts to erode the responsibilities of your jobs, or expand responsibilities outside your profession, are matters that must be dealt with."

Donahue presented several backpacks filled with items donated by NYSUT's health care members to the American Red Cross to assist in emergencies.