TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009
(copyright 2009 Texas AFT)
 
* AFT Calls for H1N1 Protection for Health-Care Workers
* New Education Chair in the U.S. Senate
 
Flu Protection for Health Workers: On the brink of the fall flu season, the American Federation of Teachers has asked the secretaries of two federal agencies to ensure that frontline health-care workers, including school nurses, receive appropriate protective equipment to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus. AFT also recommended a federal standard for comprehensive pandemic-influenza plans.
 
In a September 10 letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, AFT President Randi Weingarten referred to a report last week by the Institute of Medicine, which concluded that airborne transmission is one of the likely routes of exposure to influenza. The report stated unequivocally that respirators approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health--not surgical masks--are necessary to protect health-care workers and their patients.
 
"Those health-care workers directly interacting with symptomatic individuals must be supplied with fit-tested respirators, and this must apply in hospitals, schools, homes, and clinics," Weingarten wrote. "The information coming from all federal agencies must be clear and consistent, and should be mirrored in information from state agencies, as well." AFT represents nurses and other health-care workers in hospitals and other health-care facilities as well as in schools.
 
AFT also pointed out the lack of comprehensive pandemic-influenza plans in many health-care facilities, schools and other institutions. "We believe, in light of the current pandemic, regulation is needed to prod employers into a meaningful response," Weingarten said. AFT recommended that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration prepare an emergency temporary H1N1 standard that could be based on California's airborne-disease transmission standard, and that should include protection for health-care workers and the vulnerable populations they care for in health-care facilities, schools and other high-occupancy institutions.
 
New Education Chair for U.S. Senate: Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, is the new chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. This key panel was chaired for many years by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.
 
Harkin will be in an extremely strong position to shape both education policy and the education budget, which comes under the jurisdiction of an appropriations subcommittee that he also chairs. His ascension to the education panel's chairmanship comes at a crucial time, as Congress gets ready to revise the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as the No Child Left Behind Act in its latest incarnation, enacted in 2002).
 
Harkin has campaigned strenuously for full funding of the federal share of costs for services to students with disabilities. He also is considered to be more likely than his House counterpart (Rep. George Miller, Democrat of California) to support comprehensive reform of the No Child Left Behind Act.
 
AFT President Randi Weingarten called Sen. Harkin "a longtime champion of working Americans, our public education system, and the rights of people with disabilities." She added: "He also is committed to affordable, accessible, high-quality health-care. AFT looks forward to working with him on these issues."