Labor & Employment Law

IWJ Issues Red Cross Blood Drive Guide with Focus on Safety, Workers? Rights

By Mike Hall

The Red Cross has come under fire recently for its blood safety practices and unfair labor practices. Today, Interfaith Workers Justice (IWJ) issued a Congregational Guide urging congregations to hold the American Red Cross accountable for improving its blood safety practices and respecting workers? rights.

Every year the Red Cross holds 200,000 blood drives across the country and many are hosted by faith groups.  But, says IWJ Executive Director Kim Bobo:

There?s something that many faith groups may not know. We believe that the Red Cross is not honoring another important teaching and that is to treat others as we wish to be treated and that laborers deserve their just reward.  While we don?t want congregations to stop holding these important blood drives we do want to empower them to hold the Red Cross accountable for the safety of the blood supply and the treatment of their workers.

The Congregational Guide for Red Cross Blood Drives highlights 10 questions to ask the Red Cross around issues of ensuring safety at blood drives, respecting the rights of its workers and addressing its longstanding compliance problems with FDA blood safety regulations. The questions cover staffing levels, certification, blood handling procedures, donor screening, working conditions and labor relations. Click here for more.

In June, more than 1,000 Red Cross workers in seven cities launched a three-day unfair labor practice strike against the American Red Cross. One of the key issues, unions said, is blood drive staffing practices that workers believe are key to protecting donor and blood safety.

Workers say the Red Cross is putting donors and workers at risk by understaffing blood drives, replacing nurses with unlicensed supervisors, forcing employees to work unrealistic schedules and turning blood collection into an assembly line or fast-food process.

Contract negotiations between the Red Cross and the workers who struck?members of several unions?remain stalled. The National Labor Relations Board has issued formal complaints against the Red Cross for unlawful unfair labor practices and is now conducting hearings on these complaints in Michigan, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Just this year, the Red Cross was fined $16 million by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for blood safety compliance problems. The FDA has fined Red Cross $37 million since 2003 for blood safety violations due to recurring non-compliance with safety procedures, including donor screening, testing and handling of blood products, component preparations and quality control.

For more on blood safety issues, including recent FDA inspection observation reports, visit the Workers Committee for Blood Safety here.

Says Rabbi Jonathan Klein, executive director at Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice:

As an organization dedicated to a humanitarian mission, we believe that the American Red Cross must do more to ensure it meets its obligations to blood donors and its employees. If we host a blood drive, we want to know if it is properly staffed, whether there is a licensed nurse on-hand and whether workers assigned to the blood drive are treated fairly.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 10, 2010 (boomark / email).