Martha Baker

President

SEIU Healthcare Florida Local 1991

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 a leader of the national 90,000-member SEIU Nurse
Alliance. 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.