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Nurses

Nurses End Seven-Day Strike In Chicago

August 27, 2024 Richard Berg, Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
Chicago, Illinois – Working as a nurse in a large university hospital is a hard job. Large numbers of patients roll through. Vulnerable people look for hope, remedy and help. Despite this persistent pressure, hospital administrators ask for quick patient turnover. Supervisors ask overstressed nurses to do the work of housekeepers, food service, technical staff and others, who are often in short supply. Some doctors are nice, while others boss nurses around. This is the case at the University of Illinois Health (UIH) as well as healthcare facilities across the country. One difference is that the nurses at UIH have a labor union and decided to take a stand.

Nurses Strike At University Of Illinois Health Close To The DNC

August 19, 2024 Kristen Schorsch, WBEZ Chicago. , , , ,
UI Health nurses allege they’ve been assaulted by patients for years: shoved — one while she was pregnant — and lunged at by a patient’s relative, and otherwise at risk of getting hurt. “One of the reasons we’re striking is the security here is awful,” Emma Stone, a nurse in the intensive care unit at the Near West Side hospital, said Monday in a field with dozens of other unionized nurses, as their colleagues picketed around the hospital across the street. “It’s very scary as a nurse to think like I could get shot or stabbed.” Stone is among more than 1,000 nurses at UI Health who went on strike Monday over safety, staffing and better pay, as the Democratic National Convention kicked off blocks away at the United Center.

Open Letter From US Physicians And Nurses After Visit To Gaza

July 25, 2024 Open Letter, Popular Resistance. , , , , , ,
We are forty-five American physicians, surgeons, and nurses who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. We worked with various nongovernmental organizations and the World Health Organization in hospitals throughout the Strip. In addition to our medical and surgical expertise, many of us have a public health background, as well as experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones, including Ukraine during the brutal Russian invasion. Some of us are veterans of the United States Armed Forces. We are a multifaith and multiethnic group. None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel.

‘Nurses Against Genocide’ Protest ANA’s Silence

July 5, 2024 Marie Kelly, Workers' World. , , , ,
“ANA your hands are red, 160 nurses dead. Silence is complicity. Our code compels us.” These are some of the chants by four defiant nurses who disrupted the American Nurses Association Member Assembly in Washington D.C., which began June 27. Holding a banner reading, “Nurses Against Genocide,” the nurse activists’ dyed their hands red to symbolize the blood of thousands of Gazan martyrs in the ongoing ethnic cleansing by the rogue settler-colonial state of Israel. They stood before the dais at the assembly and halted proceedings as ANA leadership, including President Jennifer Mensik-Kennedy, sat silently.

Striking Nurses: ‘Patients Over Profits’

June 30, 2024 Lyn Neeley, Workers' World. , , , , ,
Portland, Oregon - Over 3,000 nurses from six Providence Corporation hospitals across Oregon completed a three-day strike on June 20, carrying signs saying, “Patients over profits.” Since December, the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) has been in negotiations with Providence for a contract that ensures safe staffing ratios, better hours, higher pay and improved health care benefits. The striking nurses shouted: “Heroes treated like zeros!” Providence, one of Oregon’s largest corporations, owns one-quarter of Oregon’s health care market. The yearly income of Providence CEOs has risen to $10 million.

New Orleans Nurses Fight For A New Union As Hospitals Merge

February 13, 2024 Jesse Baum, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Heidi Tujague works 12-hour shifts as an emergency room nurse at New Orleans’ University Medical Center (UMC), just outside the Central Business District. The hospital is part of a massive nonprofit, LCMC Health — which held assets of $3.57 billion in 2022 and operated over half of New Orleans’ hospitals in 2023. But despite those resources, Tujague says nurses sometimes have to scramble for supplies to care for patients. Even wheelchairs can be scarce. “You have to ask a patient, ‘Would you mind standing up and shifting to this chair so I can get this wheelchair — while you’re waiting for your X-ray — so I can get someone else to their X-ray?

Minnesota Nurses Win Big, Then Walk Back Winning Model

November 1, 2023 Sarah Hughes, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Last fall, 15,000 nurses were part of a creative coordinated bargaining effort to reshape health care in Minnesota. They won new contract language on safe staffing and substantial raises—things they hadn’t thought possible. But a year later, the Minnesota Nurses Association is riven with conflict. Members are being investigated on charges like “acting against the interests of the bargaining unit.” A candidate for vice president was removed from her elected positions and had her membership suspended, making her ineligible to run for office. How did one of the most exciting rank-and-file union efforts in health care take such a turn?

On The Picket Line

October 11, 2023 Marie Kelly, Workers World. , , , , , ,
Registered nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, have taken action against corporate greed and exploitation as well as union-busting tactics. Their strike is into its third month. The 1,700 nurses, represented by United Steelworkers Local 4-200, are demanding safe staffing. Research has proven that adequate nurse to patient ratios save lives. The pandemic was the match that lit the fire around safe staffing. Nurses were pushed to the brink and were no longer willing to put their patients’ lives and their own well-being and professional licenses at risk. Since the strike, RWJU bosses have shown that they undervalue their nurses by suspending health benefits and limiting picket lines at hospital entrances.

‘Something Must Change’: New Jersey Nurses Strike For Safe Staffing

August 24, 2023 Kelsey Khan, Labor Notes. , , , ,
I am one of 1,700 nurses on strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We are members of United Steel Workers Local 4-200. The hospital administration has used intimidation, scare tactics, and lies to convince the public that patient care is at the top of their priority list and at the bottom of ours. We have had enough. We are on day 20 of our strike, and nurses are beginning to feel the pressure. Our health insurance ends at the end of this month, and the financial strains of supporting our families on unemployment are growing. We are standing outside of the hospital day and night to show our dedication to achieving a fair contract that benefits us and, most importantly, our patients.

Striking Nurses Picket Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital

August 8, 2023 Nick Caloway, CBS. , , , , ,
New Brunswick, New Jersey - Nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick were on strike for a fourth day Monday. Staffing levels are a sticking point between the United Steelworkers Local 4-200 and the hospital. After contract talks stalled, more than 1,700 nurses walked off the job Friday. But passion on the picket line is not waning. "Clearly, we're all united for a common purpose here," said Jennifer Kwock. Kwock, who works in the neonatal ICU, said depleted staffing levels create dangerous conditions for patients and cause nurses burnout.

Chris Hedges: Nurses Fight Godzilla

August 5, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
New Brunswick, New Jersey - Judy Danella, president of United Steel Workers Local 4-200 — the union that represents Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital’s more than 1,700 nurses — stands in a church basement before a room full of her union members. Her voice quavers slightly as she delivers grim news. The hospital management, whose top administrators earn salaries in the millions of dollars, has refused to concede to any of the nurse’s core demands. Friday at 7:00 a.m. they will be locked out of the hospital and on strike. But it is not only the strike that concerns Danella, who is wearing a blue T-shirt that reads: “Safe Staffing Saves Lives.”

Nurses In Texas And Kansas Strike For First Contract

July 12, 2023 Seth Uzman, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
Through wet weather in Wichita, Kansas, and scorching heat in Austin, Texas, hundreds of nurses walked picket lines June 27 in a one-day strike for safe staffing and patient safety. Nearly 2,000 nurses represented by National Nurses United (NNU) walked out. They’re trying to get the company to bargain in good faith after winning union elections in the last year at the three struck locations: Ascension’s two campuses in Wichita and Austin’s huge Ascension Seton Medical Center, where 900 nurses work. “Our patients are being shortchanged by management, because they are short staffing our units,” said Monica Gonzalez, a medical-surgical nurse and 19-year veteran of ASMC.

Nurses Say Illinois Hospital Plagued With Unsafe Staffing

July 4, 2023 Amie Stager, The Real News Network. , , , , ,
Tania is a mother of four and a new registered nurse in the intensive care unit at Ascension St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois, also known as St. Joe’s. On May 30, at a bargaining meeting with management to negotiate for the union’s next contract, she gave testimony about how her employer allegedly treated her for bringing up safety issues. “I was two weeks off orientation and I was given four acute care patients. I texted our manager… and said ‘this is a recipe for disaster. I can’t handle this,’” she said in her testimony, which was emailed to Workday Magazine by her union, Illinois Nurses Association (INA).

Texas And Kansas: Nurses Move Forward With Historic Strikes

June 27, 2023 National Nurses United. , , , , , , ,
Registered nurses in Texas and Kansas at three Ascension hospitals are moving forward with historic one-day strikes on Tuesday, June 27, to protest management’s resistance to bargain in good faith with RNs for union contracts that would help correct the endemic staffing crisis, announced National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU). Driven by their concerns about patient safety, these will be the largest nurse strikes in Texas and Kansas history. Ascension management’s punitive three-day lockout of nurses who go on strike has failed to intimidate them.

California Set Minimum Staffing Levels For Overworked Nurses

June 11, 2023 Mark Kreidler, Capital and Main. , , ,
When Catherine Kennedy began her career as a registered nurse in California in 1980, staffing situations often resembled the Wild West. On some overnight shifts in San Francisco, Kennedy said, she and one other RN shared responsibility for a 48-bed facility. Their only help was four aides. “It was unmanageable,” Kennedy remembered. “You would work as a team, get through the night, and pray nobody would code [i.e. suffer a cardiac or respiratory arrest].” It took years of prodding, much of it coming from union-organized RNs, to get state legislation passed that mandated far stricter nurse-to-patient ratios than those Kennedy and her colleagues faced back then.
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