Labor and patient rights are under attack in New York City.
We write as nurse leaders at three of the biggest hospitals in the city: Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and New York-Presbyterian. For months during contract negotiations between the hospitals and our union, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), management has stonewalled us on our demands for safe staffing, an end to workplace violence, and maintaining our current health care and benefits. Since bargaining started in September, management has refused to negotiate on our core demands. And even while we have been on strike, they have broken promises they made to us to resume negotiations, showing open contempt for the collective bargaining process.
On January 12, 15,000 of us had enough and launched the largest nurses strike in our city’s history. It is also the biggest strike in New York City in over two decades. Our strike is now in its third week.
This strike is about much more than nurses’ pay or working conditions. It is also fundamentally about ensuring safe, high-quality medical care for our patients. It’s about making sure that nurses aren’t stretched thin by being made to care for too many patients at any given time. This strike is about overcrowded emergency rooms that endanger patient care and create the conditions for violence. It’s about saying patients shouldn’t be admitted to hallways, where their care and dignity is disregarded. It’s about fixing the problem of dangerous short-staffing that burns out nurses and prevents us from giving all patients the time and care that they deserve.
This strike is also about the future of the labor movement in New York City and the United States. The fact that management feels it can completely ignore our demands is a testament to how emboldened employers are right now under Donald Trump’s viciously anti-labor administration. Hospital CEOs are being empowered by Trump’s attacks on the National Labor Relations Board, on federal…
Auteur: Michelle Gonzalez
