Nurse Safety, Boeing's New Direction and the One Big Beautiful Bill

Today's episode of the America's Work Force Union Podcast brings together two conversations that cut to the heart of what it means to be a worker in America right now — one focused on who keeps people safe and one on who makes the decisions that shape their lives. First, National Nurses United President Jamie Brown and NNU Assistant Director of Health and Safety Jane Thomason discuss a workplace safety crisis that most Americans never see. Healthcare workers account for approximately 73% of all nonfatal workplace violence injuries in the United States, nurses are five times more likely to be assaulted at work than people in any other industry and the actual rate is dramatically higher because most incidents never get reported. Brown and Thomason make the case for the Nurse and Health Care Worker Protection Act, which would mandate safe staffing ratios and workplace violence prevention programs at hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, and address chemical and environmental hazards nurses face daily, including antineoplastic drug exposure, post-COVID disinfectants and wildfire smoke entering hospital facilities through filtration systems not designed to stop it. Then, IAM Union retired International President Tom Buffenbarger delivers his monthly independent labor voice segment covering three significant stories. Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, is meeting directly with machinists, reinstating union advisory channels and committing to keep manufacturing in Puget Sound, representing what Buffenbarger calls the most meaningful cultural shift at the company in years. Tariff uncertainty, rather than tariff levels, is causing profitable companies to lay off manufacturing workers because the planning horizon has disappeared. And the One Big Beautiful Bill is structured to remove an estimated 11 to 12 million people from Medicaid through administrative burden and shift SNAP costs to states in ways that will reduce benefits for children, veterans and working families. Visit nationalnursesunited.org for more from National Nurses United and goiam.org for more from the IAM Union.