RFPU COVID19

TAKE ACTION: Email UW Medicine Leadership

take action here!

Send this email to UW Medicine Leadership to tell them we deserve these protections and compensation for the risks we have taken and continue to take as we care for patients during this pandemic.

UW has received $113 million in federal stimulus awards related to COVID. This is funding that needs to be used to support frontline workers, like us who are struggling to get by, while sacrificing our physical and mental health during this pandemic. We were some of the first doctors in the country to care for COVID+ patients and we’ve encountered an unprecedented amount of death in the last year and a half. Our employer needs to support us physically, mentally, and financially. Most resident physicians make less than minimum wage per hour. Our co-residents and fellows are strong and willing to make great sacrifices to care for our patients, but we should not be stressed about how to support our families and afford food and housing while working on the frontlines.

Many of our peer institutions like University of Michigan, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai have received hazard pay during this time.

Even if you personally have not been impacted by COVID, please send this email on behalf of your Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Emergency Medicine, etc. co-residents who have been tirelessly working in the ICUs since last March.

take action here!

RFPU Bargaining

Fill out your Annual Survey by 11/24!

Surveys sent to all members via your non-UW.edu email address.

Make sure to fill out your survey & get your co-residents/fellows to fill out by November 24th!

This data is used for negotiations, so it’s highly important that all members fill it out. Takes less than 10 minutes on average.

RFPU Bargaining, Contract, Events

We’ve agreed to 3-7pm Bargaining Sessions

We’ve come to a compromise with Labor Relations and GME and will be bargaining from 3:00-7:00pm via Zoom starting in January.

Bargaining Dates:

January 12th, 19th
February 9th, 16th
March 9th, 23rd
April 6th, 20th
May 4th, 18th
June 1st, 15th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 29th

RSVP for Bargaining Sessions here to receive the Zoom logins before each session! Bargaining Session are open to all RFPU-NW members.

If you’re interested in being on the official Negotiations Team, please sign up here! All Negotiation team members are able to be excused from clinical work during bargaining times. 

RFPU Endorsements, Events, Racial Justice

RFPU-NW Endorses “Remember Rosie Jiménez: National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice”

This Sunday, October 3rd, people around the country will be mobilizing in support of reproductive justice. October 3rd is the 44th anniversary of Rosie Jimenez’ death from a back-alley abortion (after the Hyde Amendment banned federal funds from covering this procedure). The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear a case challenging Roe V. Wade sometime later this month, with a decision delivered next spring or early summer.

RFPU – NW Members encourage their co-residents and fellows to attend!

Seattle Event:  “Not the Church, Not the State” March and Rally
When: Sunday, October 3, 2:00pm
Where: Meet at St. James Catholic Cathedral (804 9th Avenue) and March to Federal Courthouse (700 Stewart Street)

Reproductive Justice Now: “Jiménez was a Latinx college student who died on October 3, 1977 after she couldn’t pay for a legal abortion and had no choice but to seek out a cheaper, unsafe option. She is considered to be the first person to die after the Hyde Amendment made it illegal for Medicaid to pay for abortions.

This action also connects to a Supreme Court hearing this fall on a Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that could overturn Roe vs. Wade. Let’s work together to demonstrate public support for Roe v. Wade and pressure the U.S. Supreme Court. It took a movement to win abortion and it will take a movement to keep it!

Demands: 

  • Protect & expand Roe v. Wade; safe, legal abortion on demand without apology
  • Repeal the Hyde Amendment
  • Overturn state barriers to reproductive choices
  • Stop forced sterilization
  • No to caged kids, forced assimilation, & child welfare abuses
  • End medical & environmental racism; for universal healthcare
  • Defend queer & trans families
  • Guarantee medically sound sex education & affordable childcare
  • Uphold social progress with expanded voting rights & strong unions”

RFPU Endorsements, Racial Justice

RFPU-NW Endorses 2022 Solidarity Budget

For the second year in a row, the Resident & Fellow Physician Union – Northwest is proud to endorse the Seattle Solidarity Budget alongside many trusted labor unions and community organizations. 

As healthcare providers, we see the direct impact on our patients, when our city does not adequately fund and support social services, or acknowledge the intersectionality between systems. We know the Solidarity Budget will lead us to a more equitable future for Seattle, because it is a “collective call toward a city budget that centers the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable Seattle residents, responds with funding that is commensurate with the crises we are facing, and prioritizes collective care and liberation. Our struggles to build a more equitable Seattle are interconnected. The places in our city where inequality cuts most deeply are also the places most heavily policed. At the core of the Solidarity Budget is our refusal to allow our movements to be pitted against each other for funding. Divesting from police systems and investing in Black communities goes hand in hand with climate justice work and housing justice work and Indigenous sovereignty.”  

Over the next two months, we, as members of the Seattle community have the opportunity to influence the direction of our city, through the budget process. On November 22nd, a final budget will be presented. We encourage all our co-residents and fellows (you!) to:

RFPU Bargaining, COVID19

COVID MOU: RFPU-NW Members Meet with GME & Labor Relations

Last Friday, Sept. 24th RFPU-NW members and UW GME & Labor Relations met to bargain the extension of our COVID MOU, which expired on July 31, 2021.

Original COVID MOU (expiration: 7/31/21)

Labor Relations/GME Proposal (sent: 9/23/21)

RFPU – NW Counterproposal (sent: 9/27/21)

Labor Relations/GME Counterproposal (sent: 10/1/21)

Most notably, our counterproposal includes a COVID Bonus for the continued and ongoing strain COVID has placed on all of us over the last year and a half. You and your co-residents have worked tirelessly, sacrificing yourselves to take care of your community, during this incredibly stressful time. It’s time UW takes care of us as well.

What can YOU do to get you & your co-residents a COVID bonus?

Fighting for what we deserve takes a lot of work, we can only do this if you are involved too!

RFPU Statements

Resident Physician Response to Texas Abortion Ban

In perhaps the biggest blow to Roe v Wade (1973), the Supreme Court’s inaction on Texas’s S.B. 8 poses one of the greatest threats to reproductive freedom in the state and perhaps beyond. The bill is draconian in its treatment of reproductive choice and legal right to receiving an abortion in that it prohibits abortion after 6 weeks despite the fact that nearly 85-90% of abortion procedures in the state occur after 6 weeks, well before many folks know they are pregnant. People with the means to travel will be able to access abortion in neighboring states, but those without means to travel will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. This sexist and racist law will once again disproportionately impact low-income patients of color. However, perhaps more terrifyingly, the bill allows for extremists to take the law into their own hands. This Texas law is not enforceable by the state officials, but instead permits private citizens to sue anyone, from the doctor performing the procedure to those who help pay for the procedure down to the Lyft driver who drops the patient off at the clinic, for a hefty sum of $10,000 plus legal fees. Reporters need not even be connected to the patient, nor even live in the state.

This impacts OUR labor rights and OUR ability to care for our patients. As residents and fellows, we practice medicine in a safe, evidence-based manner regardless of social circumstances. We treat all patients with dignity and respect, including upholding their bodily autonomy, and use shared-decision making to ensure their medical choices are the best option for them. There is no other fathomable context or medical decision that should be made under the duress of a $10,000 lawsuit for performing a medically safe procedure. We recognize that this bill has a sweeping effect for the state of Texas, but may have rippling effects to other states in which we will go on to practice. Indeed, despite being thousands of miles away, we will undoubtedly see patients in practices seeking this care. 

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in her dissent, “the court’s order is stunning… a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.” We, the RFPU-NW, will not. We encourage you to also consider donating to the Reproductive Health Access Project which is split among nine abortion funds providing access to folks in Texas.

In solidarity, 

The Resident and Fellow Physicians of RFPU-NW

See our Letter to the Editor in the Seattle Times here!