“This is the future of our middle class. We have to continue to organize. It’s going to be our security. I’m thinking about all the young people going through college and having to work so hard. I want them to have the same benefits that I have. We are not just RNs like we were when this union first started in the 70s. We are all UNAC/UHCP, and we all need to work together. In the end it will only make us stronger.”
A nurse at Kaiser since 1977, Jettie Deden-Castillo, NP, was given a scholarship in 1979 to become an OB/GYN Nurse Practitioner—a union-negotiated benefit. “I will be indebted to UNAC/UHCP for life for that gift,” she says. In 2011 she became Contract Specialist at Downey and it opened her eyes to the great work UNAC/UHCP accomplishes. Jettie was an officer at the Kaiser Downey affiliate before being elected to UNAC/UHCP Treasurer. In 2012, she helped to organize the Specialty Care Nurses, Certified Nurse Midwives and Wound Ostomy Nurses.