Martha Baker

Martha Baker is President of SEIU Healthcare Florida Local 1991, which represents 5,000 nurses, doctors and healthcare professionals at Jackson Health System. Ms. Baker, the founding Nurse Manager of the Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital, one of the largest public hospitals in the nation, is also the founder and former President of the national 80,000-member SEIU Nurse Alliance. She has been an advocate on a wide range of patient care issues at the local and national levels. She has been an advocate on a wide range of patient care issues at the local and national levels. From her unique perspective as an ICU nurse and labor movement activist, Ms. Baker has testified before Congress on numerous occasions of the challenges facing the nursing profession today, including setting safe nurse staffing levels, implementing safe lifting, banning the unsafe practice of mandatory overtime in hospitals, protecting health care workers from the dangers of air-borne and blood-borne infectious diseases, and other policy, safety, and regulatory matters. Ms. Baker has also testified before the U.S. Senate on the President’s controversial proposals to vaccinate health care workers against the possibility of smallpox. Since her graduation from Ohio State University’s School of Nursing in 1979, Ms. Baker has dedicated her life to effective patient advocacy and improving the quality of patient care in our nation’s hospitals. She currently resides in Miami, Florida, where she is a member of the Florida Nurses Association, Nursing Shortage Consortium of South Florida and a prominent RN leader and nurse voice for union and non-union nurses in the state. SEIU Healthcare Florida Local 1991 is the largest public healthcare union in Florida and is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, the largest and fastest-growing union in the country with more than two million members.