National Nurses United (NNU) Executive Director Puneet Maharaj addressed the convention on Tuesday morning, following the reading of the resolution “Medicare for All.” She commended UE for the union’s decades-long commitment to establishing a universal, Medicare for All-style single-payer healthcare system, saying, “We know we have to fight against the attacks that are before us, but we also have to create the future that we all deserve as the working class.”
Maharaj opened her remarks by observing, “I could say that we find ourselves in an unprecedented moment. But when an increasingly authoritarian government and their out of control billionaire buddies are threatening all working people, it would be more true to say that we are in a war, a class war.” Both UE and NNU, she said, “have always known which side of the class war we are on.”
She called the cuts to health care in the recent Republican budget bill “beyond appalling, given that the Medicaid cuts were instituted to increase funding for ICE and to pour billions into the corporations making money off of the kidnapping, detention and deportation of our community members. These cuts from both Medicaid and food programs for the poor siphon money from the most vulnerable in our communities to fund tax breaks for billionaires.”
She described how members of NNU had been fighting back against the Trump administration’s attacks on healthcare, especially condemning Trump’s cancellation of all union contracts in the Veterans Administration system, where thousands of NNU members work. “They're continuing to fight back,” she said. “Those nurses are not going to give up. Just because they took away our contract doesn't mean they took away our union. It's our collective power.”
Maharaj ended her remarks by referencing the convention theme, “One Voice, One Fight, One Future,” saying, “That's exactly how we are going to navigate this dangerous time together as one. It is possible to achieve a tomorrow where care is the driving force, not death and destruction. Union workers know this is true because we are already living it.” She said, “Because when we fight…” to which the delegates roared in response, “WE WIN!”