CWA Launches First Annual Healthcare Matters Conference

CWA healthcare workers from New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Iowa and as far away as California gathered for the first annual Healthcare Matters Conference in mid-October in Vernon Downs, NY.

The three-day event organized workshops on wide range of topics including IT trends, healthcare reform, safe patient handling and labor low. Speakers included CWA President Larry Cohen, District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton, NLRB Chair Mark Pearce and Susan Gordon, author of "Safety in Numbers" and "When Chicken Soup Isn't Enough."

"'Stand up and fight back' is much more now than a slogan," Cohen told conference attendees. "It's much more now than what we're going to do at our next bargaining fight. It's what we have to take into every community where we live. Some of them are tough communities in this part of New York State. We have to realize it's not where we come from or any of us come from, or what we look like or anything else. It's what we stand for. And we stand for economic justice. We stand for democracy. And I know the healthcare workers in this district will stand up and fight back."

Watch the full video about the conference's workshops, participants and speakers.