Perspective: Seattle Children’s is promoting ableism with its sick-time policy
Amelia Hillier, a nurse at Seattle Children’s for almost ten years, is a founding member and co-principal chair of the Disability Access Network, a connection group for employees with disabilities and their allies at Seattle Children’s. She is ready to strike because a fair and safe contract is an accessible contract and nurses with disabilities like herself deserve a contract that will protect them from discrimination.
Since Seattle Children's is a specialty hospital, most patients seeking care there have either a permanent or temporary disability. Almost half the staff identify as having a disability, including myself.
Many of the nurses I work alongside at Seattle Children's were drawn to work here because they have a disability and want to help kids like themselves. They are chronically ill, physically disabled, and/or neurodivergent. Some of them have become disabled - or their disabilities have gotten worse because they have put their bodies, their minds, and their well-being on the line to care for others.
The hospital should be a leader in promoting well-being among staff. Yet, 51% of nurses hospital wide do not have enough sick time to stay home to recover from the flu, a cold, or COVID. Additionally, sick time is tracked, and nurses can be penalized for staying home when they are ill if they’ve run out of accrued leave.
While the hospital has an infection prevention policy and personal protective equipment, it is not foolproof. Nurses consistently have high-risk exposures to infectious diseases like the common cold, influenza, coronavirus, and even measles and tuberculosis. Most nurses are told during their first days of their new nurse orientation that they will be sick more often in their first year as a nurse than they have been in their entire life.
If this is so widely known that the nurse educators warn of this, why are nurses not given enough sick time to account for this?
The hospital's actions, inaction, emails and spoken words over the past several months tell us the answer. Because it is not profitable to care for nurses when they do not produce, reproduce, and excel.
Disability Rights activist Rebecca Cokely once stated that "you do not have to be disabled to experience ableism. It's really rooted in the notion of who is valuable and worthy based on a person's appearance and/or their ability to produce, reproduce, and excel."
As negotiations between the nurses and administrators at Seattle Children's Hospital continue into their seventh month, this universal application of ableism is clear.
One of the reasons the hospital refuses to give the nurses more sick time is because they are worried the nurses will "abuse" it. What, in this context, does abuse mean? The nurses have made it clear that this sick time policy is not enough to keep their patients, themselves, and their coworkers safe. They are afraid to take time to recover from an illness due to the consequences they may face. The alternative is they come to work sick.
In the United States, it is estimated that half a million patients and healthcare providers get a hospital acquired infection (HAI) each year, and HAls are one of the leading causes of death in this country. While many hospitals have policies and care bundles to prevent HAls, one area they consistently miss the mark is viral infections spread by staff and patients. Nurses can follow infection prevention procedures down to the letter, but their efforts are invalidated if they come to work sick and are quietly spreading illness, disability, and even death to their most medically complex patients.
One of the concepts discussed frequently in disability activism is the "curb-cut effect". When curb cuts are built into crosswalks to make them more accessible to people in wheelchairs, they also make the crosswalk more accessible to people with suitcases, strollers, shopping carts.
I urge the hospital team to put away the idea of this "abuse" of sick time and think instead of curb cuts. By making the sick time policy more equitable, we make the hospital safer and more accessible for patients and staff.
Unions and their advocacy for safer working conditions have been intertwined with disability justice and accessibility since the first organizers said enough is enough. The curb cuts they made then make room for us to step into this crosswalk and fight for our safety now.
We are not asking for more sick time, workplace violence protections, and union security because we are greedy. We are asking the most profitable hospital in Washington State, one of the Top Ten pediatric hospitals the country, to realize that their concerns are rooted in ableism and will hold us back.
The quote from Rebecca Cokely comes from Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi. Podcast episode titled Ableism & Racism: Roots of The Same Tree.
