Workplace rights, legal options
Beacon leaders have also begun counseling and advising health care workers who have experienced retaliation or discipline associated with PPE issues. Educating medical professionals about their workplace rights and legal options is another key focus of the group, according to its founders.
“There are a flurry of reports coming our way about physicians and nurses, as well as other health care workers, who are for whatever reason being disciplined or retaliated against for simply seeking appropriate safety policies at their workplaces,” Dr. Hathi said. “What we’ve found is that many of them don’t even know what their options look like. Doctors, nurses, health care workers are not the typical type to engage politically, to speak out, [or to] advocate for themselves.”
In one instance, they heard from a physician who wanted to protect nurses at his hospital because they did not have masks and were being coughed on by COVID-19 patients. The doctor requested that his hospital supply masks to the nurses. After making the request, the physician was disciplined by hospital leadership, Dr. Hathi said. In another case, a physician assistant told the group she was terminated because she wanted to wear her own mask in a hospital that was treating COVID patients.
Courtesy Sheel Tyle
Sheel Tyle
“She was not allowed to, and she was fired for even bringing it up,” said Sheel Tyle, JD, an attorney and Beacon cofounder.
Beacon intends to assist health care workers who face such retaliation and discipline in a number of ways, Mr. Tyle said. For instance, by helping an individual get compensation for what happened, aiding the professional in getting their job back, or helping the worker retain a severance package of some kind, he said.
“And then there is the larger public policy issue of preventing the hospital from being a bad actor,” Mr. Tyle said. “That can be done through state or federal complaints, largely under different statutes related to workplace protection or OSHA. Our group [has] lawyers that could represent clients individually as well as a number of friends who are attorneys in various states who we could partner with, depending on the situation.”
While the organization is positioned to represent health professionals in lawsuits if necessary, Mr. Tyle emphasized that litigation is not the intended goal of the group. Rather, they are seeking to deter hospitals and others from being “bad actors,” through any number of methods, including communication, advocacy, or complaints.
Ultimately, Dr. Hathi said she hopes the organization’s efforts activate health care workers as an organizing body and in the process, spark policy change at the federal level to better protect health care workers.
“The challenges we’re facing now – protecting workplace safety, employee voice, a living wage, adequate sick and family leave – long predate this pandemic,” Dr. Hathi said. “But they’ve deepened and acquired existential significance as, battered by policy failures and the unsparing virus itself, physicians shed their political indifference and join a growing nationwide chorus to restore workers’ rights and to fundamentally reimagine our broken healthcare system. Now, more than ever before, organizations like Beacon are vital for arming health workers in this fight.”