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By Roberta Wood
CHICAGO—If he could have worn a fresh N95 mask for every procedure as mandated by the Centers for Disease Control, would surgical technologist Juan Martínez be alive today?
It was a tough question for a reporter to ask a grieving daughter. “We can’t know, but they bent rules, and that’s not how healthcare should be,” Angela Martínez told People’s World.
Angela held aloft a large portrait of her father at a demonstration on the lawn across from the entrance to University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago where he had worked for over 20 years. She was joined by her sister Rebecca, brother Juan, Jr., who had followed in his father’s footsteps as a surgical tech, sister-in-law Yaneth, and her mother Martha who had worked 13 years in the hospital’s nutritional services department.
“We came because we knew they would be honoring my dad,” Angela said, describing her father as a lifelong advocate for workplace justice. “His union, SEIU Local 73, was a big part of his life. He would be proud to see us here, in support of firstline workers.”
Called together by their unions, the Illinois Nurses Association and SEIU Local 73, hospital staff and families carefully distanced themselves last Friday at noon while demanding proper equipment and hazard pay....
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