As a bargaining unit, Montefiore has tried to make sure that we collaborate with our fellow hospitals throughout the private sector. Generally, we have conventions once a year where NYSNA nurses throughout the state are invited to come to discuss different issues across the organization. There’s an opportunity to bring resolutions forth and to try to bring change in the union.
Our employers, these hospital megacorporations, have truly shown that they don’t care about their patients or their workers.
Usually as a bargaining unit, we tell the members who come with us — our delegates, who usually also become CAT members — that our role in those conventions is to try to make friends. What we mean is, talk to other hospitals, get an idea of how they’re feeling. What is it that they want to gain out of this contract campaign? We would even give people a notepad and be like, “Go get people’s names and numbers. Let’s build our network outside of just Montefiore.” That’s been a part of our culture at Montefiore for the last few years, at least since the 2023 campaign.
That was the beginning of us building a framework for collaboration among the private sector nurses and anybody else who wanted to be involved. Because, of course, we also want friends in the North Country, we want friends everywhere. But there was a very intentional goal of building those networks over the last few years as a bargaining unit. And it takes time, because to build a relationship, you have to build trust. We’ve done some of that work with some of the other systems. We have relationships with Montefiore Nyack, with Montefiore New Rochelle, with Montefiore Mount Vernon.
Since the campaign was coming up, we were trying to focus on the fifteen hospitals that were part of the New York City private sector negotiations, including the safety-net hospitals [smaller hospitals that disproportionately serve poorer patients].
In other places, we already had…
Auteur: Michelle Gonzalez
