First and foremost, I want to praise wholeheartedly our members from Rhode Island Hospital. During these dark times due to this COVID-19 crisis, our members of RIH have continually met that challenge. They’re right on the front lines of this crisis in caring for our patients on a daily basis. They are all true heroes.

Because of the financial hit that Lifespan has incurred, we’ve been in a constant contact and had several meetings with Hospital representatives to avoid layoffs. Our main mission has been keeping our members safe and employed. Currently only voluntary furloughs have been implemented. Unfortunately a lot of our per diem hours have been cut but hopefully we can get through this tough time. And they can be given hours again and get them back working.

We’ve had several conference calls with Governor Raimondo and her staff in putting pressure on the Hospital not to layoff our members, to utilize them for retraining and redeployment in other areas of need. To this point, the Governor has done an incredible job in helping to keep our members employed.

We’ve had several conference calls with other labor leaders in the healthcare industry, namely UNAP and SEIU, in keeping with CDC recommendations. We’ve worked together in making sure healthcare workers stay employed, and that safety recommendations are implemented uniformly