Health Care Workers Are Joining Team Yarris for Putnam

As we build momentum toward November 3rd, our campaign has more exciting news to share: 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the union representing Putnam County's nursing home, hospital, and home care workers, has endorsed our campaign for County Executive.

This endorsement comes through the union's political action program, and Maurice Larry, 1199SEIU/UHWE's Political Coordinator, conveyed it to our campaign. In announcing the endorsement, Larry pointed to a record built on standing up for workers, fighting for quality health care, and showing up on the issues that matter most to the people who care for our neighbors in nursing homes, hospitals, and their own homes.

This one means a lot to me, because these are the folks who are living the affordability crisis they see every day in their patients. Big corporations are buying up regional health care centers, and too often that means cutting patient care and workers' wages, all in the name of profit. Add in the federal cuts to health care funding, and our health care workers find it harder and harder to live in the county they serve.

That's a problem for everyone. The people who staff our nursing homes and hospitals, and who show up at our neighbors' front doors to provide home care, need to be able to afford a life here. When they can't, our seniors and our families lose the people they depend on most. Keeping health care workers rooted in Putnam is part of keeping Putnam livable, period.

That's exactly what the Putnam Possible Project is built to do. A community college and trade school that opens doors for the next generation of nurses, aides, and health care professionals. Housing policy that keeps working families, young people, and seniors from being priced out of the county they grew up in. A county government that invests in its people instead of hoarding their tax dollars while services erode.

I'm honored that 1199SEIU has chosen to have my back, and I intend to have theirs. This endorsement tells me that working people believe Putnam is possible, and that belief is what's going to carry us to November.