CWA Prepares to Fight Ebola

CWA and the Steelworkers' safety and health departments will be training workers on Ebola and its potential transmission, thanks to a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

In coordination with District 1, where the training session will take place, CWA will have a curriculum developed for health care workers within two weeks. Targeted trainings for airline, telecommunications, and social service workers will follow.

"We want to make certain that health care workers have the protection and training they need to keep them safe," said CWA President Larry Cohen. "It also is critical that the U.S. support efforts in West Africa to stop the spread of this disease."

Recently, a healthcare worker who attended to an Ebola patient in Dallas traveled on a Frontier Airlines flight. AFA-CWA has been working with union leadership at Frontier, Frontier management and the Centers for Disease Control. The union has been engaged in managing the immediate response, reviewing facts as the information evolves and advocating the best provisions to protect members.

(For more Ebola resources for Flight Attendants visit www.afacwa.org/ebola.)

The AFL-CIO sent letters to President Barack Obama and Congress urging them to put in place mandatory protections and other workplace standards for hospitals and other health care facilities. At the same time, CWA locals are partnering with their employers to better diagnose and treat future Ebola patients.

CWA Local 1168 has been working with its main employer, Kaleida Health, on a daily basis to create protocols, provide equipment and host training sessions. McCarthy said that when they discovered their surgical bonnets were fluid penetrable, the union quickly worked with the hospitals to stock sturdier headgear that would wrap all around workers' heads. And when members expressed concerns about gloves that were prone to ripping, all it took was one call to the employer to order more of the purple nitrile exam gloves workers had been requesting.

"It's a moving target still, what the response might be," said CWA Local 1168's health and safety director Dana McCarthy. "But we're always doing more than what the Centers for Disease Control is recommending."