NYC Nurses' Strike Enters 10th Day; Mayor Mamdani & Sen. Sanders Join Picket Line

[Uncle Joe]

The largest nurses' strike in New York City history has reached its 10th day, as negotiations stall. Nearly 15,000 New York City nurses are fighting for a contract that includes higher pay, a staffing increase to manage patients, improved benefits and workplace protections against violence. Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined the picket line at Mount Sinai West Tuesday with the New York State Nurses Association. "This is a fight for our patients," says Michelle Gonzalez, a nurse at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, who notes one of the nurses' priorities in contract negotiations "is to have ICE officers not be allowed into our facilities."

[Jilly_in_VA]

1. Completely understand what they're striking for

I retired (medical issues not related to nursing) in 2012 and finally let my license lapse in 2020 due to Covid. I'd been volunteering with Remote Medical Access Prior to getting Covid myself in 2019 before it was a thing, but decide "here's your sign" at that point.

Prior to that, I'd worked in many situations---medical-surgical and telemetry floors, cardiology, ICU, neonatal, briefly in pediatrics until I decided that was definitely not for me, home health for 6 1/2 years, and three years as a travel nurse in a lot of different hospitals. Home health was pretty okay; I was on my own most of the time in rural east Tennessee, and aside from the last year when I had to navigate a backstabbing manager, the only things I faced, usually, were occasional rowdy dogs and once, a guard peacock nobody had warned me about. But in the hospital it was different. There, no matter where there was, It was all kinds of things---pretty constant understaffing with supervisors whining that they had "nobody" to help me out, getting yanked to floors where I had no experience (oncology, anyone?), patients with dementia yanking out IVs etc. but we couldn't put restraints on them because of policy, being threatened by family members, or hit or spit at or scratched by patients or and once even bitten by a patient...you name it. So I get it. I watch "The Pitt" and I applaud its gritty reality. When the charge nurse was assaulted by a patient in the ambulance bay and nobody did anything about it and she got up and went on back to work---that's real, people! So I absolutely get why they are striking and why Mayor Mamdani and Sen. Sanders (and hopefully AOC soon) are joining them.