There is nowhere nurses would rather be than at the bedside of their patients. When 15,000 nurses with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) decided that they needed to be outside on the picket line, in record-setting cold, it is because something is deeply wrong inside their hospitals.
What began on January 12 as the largest strike of nursing staff in New York City history has ballooned into an extended war of attrition between workers and CEOs. The nurses’ demands have not changed: safer staffing levels, a modest pay increase, and stricter security measures to keep nurses safe at work.
The response from the bosses has been to spend $100 million on scab nurses, to fire workers who spoke out, and to slander the union. Our governor has also sided with the bosses, signing and then extending an executive order that allows hospitals to disregard training minimums and bring in hundreds of underqualified nurses.
This strike isn’t about money. It is about ensuring that the people who care for us are cared for.
What nurses are demanding is not radical, and it is not selfish. They are simply asking for the security in their jobs to live lives of dignity.
When the people who take care of us do not feel safe in their workplaces, we all suffer. Current staffing levels endanger patients. Nurses are expected to care for double or triple, or even more, patients than the standards set in peer-reviewed nursing studies. The quality of our health care should not be determined by the bottom lines of multimillion-dollar hospitals who can afford to pay CEOs tens of millions of dollars while denying patients the care they deserve. But this is the result of a health care system that prioritizes profits over care and community.
What nurses are demanding is not radical, and it is not selfish. They are simply asking for the security in their jobs to live lives of dignity and to not feel as if saving the life of a patient comes at the expense of their own.
It was the union…
Auteur: Phara Souffrant Forrest
