We need to make public health a priority.

When a government has to cut back on spending, where does it cut back? Inevitably on health care and education.

It's not going to be the individual ... technical (public health) decisions that are going to hold our society together in the face of an immense struggle with an influenza pandemic,

When you place all those people back in the city without a health care infrastructure, it is a risky proposition. We're going to have a second disaster in this city.

Public health systems now, where there's the money, are much, much better.

We want to go from confrontation to cooperation, ... We want our members and our workers to have health care, we want our members to get wages and improvements based on productivity. Most of all, we want our workers to be treated with dignity.