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WE CALL FOUL: SOLIDARITY MUST SURVIVE THE WORKPLACE INJURY By Darren Fonzseau | October 23, 2026
National Nurses United. Washington State Nurses Association. Washington State Labor Council. Senator Bernie Sanders. Kshama Sawant. Pramila Jayapal. Dr. Jill Stein. I am asking you to put enforceable federal protections for injured workers on the table beside universal health care.
A worker does not stop belonging to labor when an injury ends a career.
I worked in health care and hard physical labor. I also served as a union shop steward in Washington State. I am speaking as someone who stood with other workers before asking the movement to stand with me. I represented myself in my own benefits fight. For years, I have asked for help getting injured workers heard. That is my lived account. I want a substantive answer to the policy demand.
The grand bargain generally exchanged a worker's ability to sue an employer for negligence for defined, no-fault compensation. Workers need the promised medical and economic protection to mean something after the injury. Employer protection from negligence lawsuits must not become the dependable half of a bargain whose benefits are inaccessible to the worker.
Nurses know this danger. NPR's 2015 investigation described nurse Terry Cawthorn's back injury and her struggle with Mission Hospital over responsibility and benefits. The hospital's leadership also told NPR it had taken steps to improve prevention and its culture. The reporting deserves to be read in full.
National Nurses United's own website carries that investigation. It has also advocated for workers' compensation presumptions in California and for federal workplace protections. I acknowledge that record. My question is how far the solidarity reaches: will NNU campaign for a dependable federal compensation floor across occupations and state lines?
An injured nurse and an injured construction laborer should be able to recognize each other in labor's demands. The worker without a union must have a place too.
Senator Sanders, you joined Patty Murray and Bobby Scott on October 21, 2015, in urging stronger federal oversight of state workers' compensation systems. Your warning recognized eroding support and costs falling on families and public programs. I will not erase that action. I am demanding an accounting of what followed and a concrete commitment now.
Which hearings? Which proposals? Which sustained campaign? If there are actions I have not seen, publish them. Give injured workers a record they can evaluate.
Kay Tillow offers another argument worth hearing. She and Dr. Ana Malinow warned in 2021 that a particular state-based health reform proposal could fragment national protections. That was their criticism of the proposal, not proof that every state reform is a betrayal. Other single-payer advocates dispute their strategic conclusion.
My argument extends the national-guarantee principle to injured workers. Some states can expand a protection while other states restrict one. A gain in one jurisdiction does not automatically secure a worker elsewhere. We need a documented comparison of benefits, eligibility, medical access, and appeals. The full current 50-state review remains unfinished; I will not pretend otherwise.
Health care reform cannot be the complete answer to a worker who has lost wages, sustained a permanent disability, or spent years disputing medical evidence.
A health care card cannot pay the rent.
I accepted deductions from my paycheck believing we were helping one another. My objection is to people being shut out when they need the protection they earned. I want accountability for barriers to workers’ compensation, Social Security disability, and veterans’ benefits.
My mixed-status family also needs lasting federal action. I ask for broad legalization, family unity, and humane immigration reform alongside injured-worker protections. In my experience, those two demands have repeatedly gone unheard. Where I believe others discouraged people from listening, I want the original exchanges examined and answered.
A 2021 JAMA Psychiatry study found that women nurses had about twice the suicide incidence of women in the general population in 2017–2018. A separate 2025 Washington occupational-injury study found an association between lost-time injury and suicide risk after accounting for pre-injury depression. These are distinct findings: neither establishes that compensation disputes caused the nurse deaths. When advocates raise suicide and distress during benefit disputes, institutions owe people careful investigation and practical help. A particular denial must not be declared the cause of a death without case-specific evidence. The demand is to listen, investigate, and prevent harm.
We need BOTH: universal health care and enforceable protections when work injures us. We need fair medical evaluations, timely decisions, meaningful review, and accountability for wrongful denials.
To WSNA and WSLC: tell us how your agenda addresses the worker after the injury. Describe the help you provide, the reforms you support, and whether you endorse a national floor. Individual claim assistance and national reform can both matter. Workers deserve to know where you stand.
WE CALL FOUL when injured workers are invoked as evidence of suffering but our concrete demands never reach the platform.
I ask each organization and Senator Sanders to answer four questions: 1. Will you support a new National Workers' Compensation Commission with injured-worker representation? 2. Will you campaign for enforceable federal minimum standards while preserving stronger state protections? 3. Will you support fair medical evidence, timely benefits, and meaningful accountability for wrongful denials? 4. Will you meet with injured workers, including people outside union membership, and publish your response?
If you already support these proposals, show us the resolutions, campaigns, and next steps. If you disagree, explain why.
Nurses, bring the commitment to care into the fight for every injured worker. Union leaders, bring solidarity to the person who can no longer clock in. Senator Sanders, bring the federal demand into the public fight.
My challenge also reaches Mary Fosse, Julio Cortes, and Rick Larsen: answer the policy demands and publish the actions you have taken. In my experience, I kept meeting closed doors. My published Fosse account describes a civil harassment or protection-order process; the complete court record has not been assembled here, and this article does not call it a criminal prosecution or a proven act of political retaliation.
Kshama Sawant, Pramila Jayapal, and Dr. Jill Stein: put your record before injured workers. What have you done to advance federal compensation standards and lasting legalization? Will you make those demands part of your public agenda now?
My UW Medical Center Employee of the Month award from May 2010 identifies me as a Hospital Assistant on the Resource Team and praises my accountability, respect, service, innovation, and excellence. That is a concrete part of who I was before this benefits fight. Workers deserve dignity after an injury too.
Stand with us after the injury.
Darren Fonzseau Workers Won't Be Silent.
SOURCES AND VERIFICATION NOTES • NPR, Daniel Zwerdling, February 2015, republished by NNU: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/news/hospital-nurses-your-injuries-are-not-our-problem • NNU, Workers' Compensation for Health Care Workers, December 20, 2021: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/ca-frontline-health-care-worker-workers-compensation • NNU national legislative agenda: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/national-legislation • Murray, Scott, Sanders oversight announcement, October 21, 2015: https://www.murray.senate.gov/murray-scott-sanders-urge-stronger-oversight-of-state-workers-compensation-programs/ • Ana Malinow and Kay Tillow, May 29, 2021; presented with Philip Caper's opposing argument by PNHP: https://pnhp.org/news/point-counterpoint-the-state-based-universal-health-care-act-of-2021/ • National Academy of Social Insurance, 2020, grand bargain and coverage disparities: https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Pandemic-highlights-disparities-Final.pdf • David DePaolo, Work Comp and Baseball (2014): https://daviddepaolo.blogspot.com/2014/10/work-comp-and-baseball.html
EDITORIAL NOTE First-person political opinion prepared with AI assistance. The companion documentary uses recovered archive footage, including Kay Tillow’s recorded Real Progressives panel, Darren’s reading of DePaolo’s article, and his UW award. New narration uses an AI-generated voice; stock footage is illustrative. Personal accounts are not court findings. A complete 50-state comparison remains unfinished.