Above photo: Maggie Latona smiles as a fire truck drives by the picket line in support. Sue Brisk.
Maggie Latona is one of more than 15,000 nurses in the New York State Nurses Association currently on strike. She is also a member of the union’s Contract Action Team which has engaged with members to determine what they want to fight for. She joined “The Indypendent News Hour”, our weekly radio show, on Tuesday from the picket line outside Mount Sinai Hospital, to discuss the nurses’ strike, what’s at stake in their fight, and how patient care is impacted by the current conditions nurses are working under.
Latona also detailed the ways in which some of the wealthiest hospital networks in the city, like Mount Sinai, New York Presbyterian and Montefiore, are overcharging patients and leaving their nursing staff without adequate protection or support. She also warned about the hospital’s growing interest in bringing Artificial Intelligence into the hospital workplace to the detriment of nurses and patients alike. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. To see our video footage of the nurses from their second day on the picket line, click here and here.
What has it been like on the picket line of a strike that may seem to go for a while?
We are fired up. The hospital management has not approached the union at all in days, since the 30th of December. We are fired up, we are ready to fight, and we are coming out in numbers. We had a nice, warm day today, and we are going to be back tomorrow, back the next day, as long as it takes.
Tell us about your key demands and how the management has responded so far.
We are fighting for safe staffing, safe nurse to patient ratios. That’s something that we fought for in our 2023 contract that they are trying to roll back those protections on. We’re fighting against workplace violence. We had an active shooter literally across the street from where we are picketing, and a bomb threat within the span of a few weeks that the nurses were not notified of.
We’re asking for basic security measures that the hospital won’t agree to, such as metal detectors and screening for any visitor and employee who comes into the hospital, and we are asking for our health care. Nursing is a very physical job, a very demanding job, and we are working with the sickest people, that can be communicable diseases, that can be, things like COVID. We were on the front lines for COVID, and they’re experiencing a huge, huge surge in the flu right now. We experience physical violence from patients, unfortunately, and Mount Sinai and these other huge hospital networks are not willing to give us our health care to protect the nurses who protect their patients.
Talk about the wealth and the power of these three large, privately run hospital networks that you all are striking against?
These three big hospital networks get millions and millions of dollars in grants, donations, government funding, and we, as the nurses, staff, frontline workers, we don’t see that. Unfortunately, our patients don’t see a lot of that, even though it’s coming out of their own pockets.
Between 2013 and 2023 there was an increase of approximately 110% of the cost of health care. And at Mount Sinai, specifically, it was over 200%. They are charging our patients who are part of these vulnerable populations, exponentially more than they need to be, and they’re pocketing that.
What is your reaction to Mayor Mamdani enthusiastically supporting your strike and Governor Hochul saying she really wishes you all would stay on the job, and it’s cool to negotiate, but going on strike is problematic?
Mayor Mamdani is certainly always in support of the worker, and we are incredibly appreciative of his support and the support of the other city officials that have been speaking out on our behalf and fighting for us. He said, “dignity and respect and fair wages.”
But we are fighting for the dignity and the respect that we deserve as nurses, as healthcare providers, as professionals, and for the dignity and respect that in turn, we can give to our patients.
In terms of Governor Hochul, I think the nurses that are striking right now, and I hope nurses and their family members and others across the state, are disappointed by her stance. We have been bargaining in good faith, showing up to the table since September. The New York State Nurses Association, our delegates and our executive committee members who are nurses are employed at the hospitals themselves.
We have 10 members of our executive committee nurses who are working day in and day out to fight for the other nurses. So I was very disappointed that Governor Hochul believes that we’re not coming to the table. We’re coming to the table every day. We have been at that table since early December, almost daily, and we have not heard from management in the last day, two days and and earlier, about anything. We are ready, willing and able to speak to these management, associates, and individuals on what we need as nurses, what our patients need and what we deserve.
When nurses go on strike, what happens to the patients who need emergency care, and how does the hospital deal with and respond to the strike?
First and foremost, we do not want to ever prevent patients from getting care or say they shouldn’t go if they need care, whether it’s you’re going to an urgent care for a cold or it’s a life threatening medical emergency, we absolutely would never say don’t go to Mount Sinai or don’t go to New York Presbyterian.
We want to prioritize your safety and your health, and that’s what we do every day on the job. It’s what we are fighting for. The hospitals are employing travel nurses who are not meeting the expectations that the hospital holds for our staff nurses. They are being asked to work 60 to 75 hours a week which is more than double what a staff nurse is asked to work. We are concerned about their capability to perform this job. Qualifications aside, to ask someone to work five or six days, 12 and a half hour shifts back to back, that’s not safe for anybody. That’s not safe for our patients, that’s not safe for those individuals, and it’s not in the best interest of the patients.
These travel nurses are being paid as much as $10,000 a week by these hospital networks while you’re on strike. What does that say about the hospital, these hospitals not being able to meet your financial demands?
That’s the literal million dollar question. I have seen job postings. We have gotten emails from recruiters and agencies for contracts between eight and ten thousand dollars. Mount Sinai specifically said they hired 1400 nurses to cover the needs of their patients at $8,000 a week. You’re talking $11 million, and they’re also covering their room and board. They’re covering their flights to and from wherever they’re coming from, and bussing them back and forth from the hotels to the hospital.
They are giving them the funds that they should be giving our nurses. $10,000 a week. That’s four or five nurses’ weekly paycheck. So why is it that they’re willing to spend four or five times on a travel nurse who I don’t want to speak for them and say they’re in it for the money, but who are being paid an exorbitant amount? Why are they saying that they’re willing to pay these nurses four or five times what we’re worth and not willing to compromise or even speak to the nurses on our side of the table?
A lot of the revenue that these hospitals make are from elective surgeries — the kind of medical care that is not life and death or emergency or urgent care treatments that can be postponed, and that’s what these hospitals have to do when they’re short staffed during a strike. Is that correct?
Exactly. We see a lot of Medicare, Medicaid patients that we treat in-patient, but we also have very renowned surgical centers. These procedural areas are the ones that bring in the revenue. When nurses are on strike and they are choosing to continue to have these surgeries go on, patients and surgeons are canceling. I have heard that the PACU, the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit, is almost empty right now because all of the surgeons are refusing to do the procedures without staff nurses. They don’t know and they can’t trust the travel nurses, and they’re not able to ensure the safety of their own patients. So they are losing money left and right from the lack of surgeries going in these elective procedures in interventional radiology cardiac and they are choosing to spend that money on travel nurses to replace their staff.
Tell us more about the mandatory staffing ratios you all won with the last strike in 2023 and how it’s made a difference for both nurses and patients? Why do you believe that hospitals want to roll this back?
Last time we won historic staffing ratios, we were able to enforce the safe staffing that we need. In 2023, the last contract that we won, we spoke to each individual unit and said, “What do you need? What do your patients need, and what can we do to ensure that our patients are being treated safely?”
Mount Sinai wants to roll back that language that enforces safe staffing. They want to roll back the provisions that we’ve won in order to enforce that staffing ratio, in order to get away with not staffing properly. This ensures that the most vulnerable of our patients, the neonatal ICU, the NICU, these patients, babies, the fragile, fragile babies, are being left where the nurses are unable to adequately care for them, because they have three, four other patients.
Even adults who are here for, say, the Flu, it’s not fair to expect one nurse to care for an unreasonable amount of patients and provide something that Mount Sinai apparently prides themselves on, on “patient centered care.” There’s no way to safely do that and adequately care for your patients with these unsafe ratios.
Talk about management’s attempt at these big private hospitals to integrate artificial intelligence into your workplace and the impact that could have in the coming years? Both in terms of how it could supercharge management’s ability to surveil your work and also the prospects that artificial intelligence could start making decisions and judgments about patient care that is currently in the hands of nurses.
Mount Sinai just spent $100 million on a new AI building. What’s that going to do for patient care? I’m not sure, but that’s where they chose to prioritize putting their funds, and they are trying to enforce using AI to monitor the nurses in terms of our care, in terms of our time management. They want to be able to track exactly what we’re doing at all times, and they are not willing to speak very clearly on what they want this AI to do in terms of making decisions for patient care.
It’s our understanding that they want to use these algorithms in order to supersede nursing judgment. A computer can’t anticipate patient care. It can’t anticipate when a patient’s condition declines, when they suddenly need emergency intervention, when a patient who 10 minutes ago was fine, all of a sudden, is unresponsive. They also won’t put language into our contract about not replacing the nurses with these artificial intelligence programs. They claim that they can’t predict what technology will come in the next three years, but they won’t agree that nurses are going to be vital at the bedside and taking care of patients without artificial intelligence. With this patient centered care they pride themselves on?
How can people come out and support you all at the picket line, or any other way you all could use support?
We need our community. We serve our community, and we need you to come serve us. Please help us out. We are at the picket line every day. Mount Sinai, hospital on the Upper East Side, West Morningside, New York Presbyterian, Montefiore, they’re outside on the ticket line. These nurses who should be inside, helping our patients, helping our communities.
We’re the ones that need you now to show up. Speak to your elected officials. Write to the mayor. Write to Governor Hochul who apparently does not consider us essential workers anymore. Please come out and support us. Raise your voices and support us like we try to support you every single day.
