Socialist Alternative interviewed Seamus Whelan, an RN Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) member at the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), who is helping organize a fightback against massive cuts in healthcare that will affect working-class people hard in Boston. (Seamus speaks in a personal capacity.)

What is the CHA and who does it serve?
CHA is a healthcare network system which comprises three hospitals and numerous healthcare centers and clinics in three Greater Boston cities. It is one of the two main community “safety net” organizations in the state that cares for the uninsured and underinsured and treats the large immigrant and homeless populations in the area.

How many jobs are being affected by these cuts, and are more cuts expected in the future?
This is the second round of recent cuts. This round of cuts will see the axing of over 300 mainly-unionized direct-care providers, including nurses, healthcare assistants, and mental health counselors. Somerville Hospital will be effectively closed with the loss of all its in-patient beds, and we will also lose another in-patient psychiatric unit, an addictions unit, and a pediatric unit.

How will these cuts affect people in the communities who rely on CHA?
CHA is a last resort provider for many that come to us for care. These patients have no other choices and nowhere else to go. For psychiatric patients, there are no community care options out there. We are it.

How are workers planning to fight these cuts, and what are the next steps in this struggle?
We are attempting to build a broad coalition to unite all the workers and the trade union organizations in the CHA and to mobilize support in the communities that we serve and among the patients and their families who depend on us. We also wish to connect up with other workers and organizations that face similar cuts and attacks in their workplaces and to the services they provide.

What will it take to win this struggle?
It will take a mass mobilization and a campaign of community outreach and direct actions to bring about real reform and drive back these attacks. I also feel we need to build a political alternative to the big business Democrats and Republicans, who are responsible for these attacks, and to support the election of pro-worker candidates and an independent party for working people.