Title
Recognizing the work and contributions of lifelong nurse and labor organizer Patricia (Patty)
Eakin, who built worker power for the benefit of Philadelphia nurses and patients and whose leadership and mentorship has inspired generations of activists and leaders in the City of Philadelphia.
Body
WHEREAS, Patty
Eakin was born on January 8th, 1949, and came of age during the growth of the Civil Rights Movement, women's rights movement, and anti-war movement, and always had a strong sense of what was fair and what wasn't; and
WHEREAS, After college and a year in Spain, she moved to Philadelphia with a friend, and began attending Thomas Jefferson University College of Health Professions, where she graduated with a 4.0 in 1976; then soon learned from another bedside nurse that no matter how good a nurse you are, if you have too many patients, you will fail, and the administration will always try to give you too many patients, so nurses have to stick together and be willing to fight for better conditions via a union, or else both nurses and patients will suffer; and
WHEREAS, She got her first nursing job as a public health nurse with the Visiting Nurse Association of Philadelphia, where she made house calls to patients living in Southwest Philadelphia and along with others successfully organized a union during her six years there; and
WHEREAS, She then decided she wanted to work at a unionized hospital and be involved in fights for safe staffing, so in 1983 went to Temple University Hospital, where she would sometimes have 13 patients at a time; and
WHEREAS,
Eakin and other nurses were unhappy with the direction of their union and union leadership, and felt like the union wasn't supporting the fight for safe staffing ratios or against the privatization of hospitals, so she helped lead the fight to leave that union and start a new union for nurses and allied professionals: and
WHEREAS,
Eakin mobilized and led an organizing team that included more than 50...
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