Nurses enter day 9 of the Nurses strike.
Picture by Lloyd Mitchell
Ask any New Yorker how a nurse has touched our lives — most of us have a narrative.
In 2020, my father was identified with stage 4 colon most cancers. His physician was affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian, and I witnessed firsthand how nurses there balanced caring for sufferers and comforting members of the family fearing the worst, determined for options and solace. So many occasions it was nurses I turned to for assist. Once I couldn’t perceive what the physician instructed me, it was the nurses who broke it down into less complicated phrases. Once I obtained a invoice for greater than I made in a yr, it was the nurses who walked me by way of find out how to submit claims to the insurance coverage firm. My father sadly handed away a couple of years later, however I’m perpetually grateful for the care nurses gave my father and my household once we wanted it probably the most. And my story will not be distinctive. Nurses have been there for us in a number of the Metropolis’s darkest days, and in all of the smaller moments too, whether or not readying our youngsters for a check-up, stabilizing an bronchial asthma assault, or caring for a sick mother or father.
Now, nurses want our help. New York State Nurses Affiliation members at NewYork-Presbyterian the place my father obtained care, in addition to at Mount Sinai and Montefiore, have been on strike since January 12, preventing for protected staffing and protections from office violence.
Because the strike enters its fifth week, rich hospital CEOs proceed to cry “think of the patients!” as they place blame at nurses’ toes. However nurses aren’t responsible; all they need is to ship the best customary of care. Affected person security is their largest concern, as crowded hospital models stretch nurses to the bounds of high quality care. However up to now, administration has backtracked on protected staffing requirements that save lives and ignored nurses’ calls for for office violence protections. How can we anticipate nurses to maintain us protected and wholesome in the event that they aren’t delivered these protections in return?
CEOs at these hospitals make about 120 occasions greater than the typical nurse, with salaries as much as $26 million a yr. That’s about $70,000 a day, or greater than most New Yorkers make in a whole yr. Whereas NYC hospitals total have raised costs for care by about 150% within the final decade, NewYork-Presbyterian has inflated costs by 187%; Montefiore by 166%, and Mount Sinai by 213%. Presbyterian is even beneath investigation for colluding with insurance coverage firms to maintain costs excessive, with their common hospital keep costing $170,000. All of this whereas they pay momentary alternative nurses as a lot as $10,000 per week. I believe they’ll afford to rent sufficient nurses to offer protected affected person care.
Grasping hospital executives can cease this strike tomorrow by merely bargaining in good religion and agreeing to the nurses’ proposals. However as a substitute of delivering nurses the identical care and compassion they offer us daily, administration is stalling, lowballing, and unionbusting, leaving practically 15,000 employees to picket within the frigid chilly.
It’s a snapshot of a bigger battle, not simply in New York however throughout the nation: company greed is tanking employees’ rights, wages, healthcare, and security, and worsening our affordability disaster.
Healthcare is a good instance. Rich personal hospitals are jacking up costs, charging sufferers greater than they should, and piling up the earnings. They minimize corners on staffing and security, too, to avoid wasting an additional buck. Then, when nurses ask for cheap enhancements, executives scoff, claiming they’ll’t afford their very own inflated costs. In actuality, these hospitals have already earmarked their money for wealthy executives, dangerous investments, and expansions, not for frontline nurses and their sufferers. New York Metropolis’s rich non-profit hospitals are following the identical previous company playbook that has labored each time: value gouge customers, exploit employees, pocket the earnings.
Effectively, not this time. New York is a union city, and New Yorkers stand with nurses. When me and the remainder of the ALIGN group went to the strike line in solidarity, the power was electrical. We now have to maintain that power excessive — preserve exhibiting up on the picket traces, and preserve donating to the strike fund. We also needs to preserve the strain on these personal hospital methods to place earnings earlier than sufferers, respect their employees’ rights and settle truthful contracts that get hardworking New York nurses again to work.
We belief nurses with our lives and our households. We belief them to know what we’d like. They know what they want, too.
Moore is the Govt Director of employee justice group ALIGN.
