As part of the week of action around the annual commemoration of Workers Memorial Day in Los Angeles, healthcare workers, patient advocates, and the community are holding a “Safe Workers Save Lives” rally near College Hospital Cerritos on April 29 to highlight the violence that healthcare workers face on the job every day.

Violence at College Hospital Cerritos and throughout the healthcare industry is widespread. More than 70% of all workplace assaults occur in healthcare and social service settings.

In order to provide the quality healthcare that patients in our communities deserve, we ourselves need to be safe at work. The community is coming out to say the same thing: we deserve quality healthcare “sin peligros” (without danger).

College Hospital Cerritos nurses and other healthcare workers will share their stories of workplace violence and call on management to put common sense safeguards in place to protect them from violence on the job so that they can provide quality healthcare.

Please join us on April 29. As Mother Jones famously said, “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”

There are currently no federal or state regulations around the occupational hazard of workplace violence. The California Safe Care Standard campaign, spearheaded and primarily funded by SEIU Local 121RN and the SEIU Nurse Alliance of California, is working to change this in California. The campaign petitioned Cal/OSHA last year to create what will be the country’s first comprehensive regulation around workplace violence for healthcare workers. The regulation is now in the formal rulemaking process and Cal/OSHA anticipates that it will be in place by July 2016.