On the Line with Nurses and Service Workers
Nurses at St. Vincent hospital in Worcester, Mass., cast an overwhelming yes vote this week to authorize a strike. The nurses are represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association. Nurse Marlena Pellegrino told the Telegram and Gazette that nurses are demanding appropriate staffing to maintain patient care and a safe workplace.
Pellegrino said the nurses are hopeful that hospital management will, "see the light and start putting patients first," while adding, that the situation is "very telling when a corporation does not want to engage with their nurses to talk about safety of patients in their hospital."
According to Joe Herosy in Working Mass, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare issued its “last, best and final” offer on January 28. As Herosy noted:
Tenet recently announced annual profits of more than $400 million. This corporation used furloughs and staffing cuts, along with nearly $3 billion dollars in taxpayer funded CARES Act funding to boost its profits for shareholders and “improve its cash position.
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) joined the picket line on February 18. He said:
“To Tenet, St. Vincent nurses are just a budget line, but to the people of Worcester and beyond, they are a lifeline. Tenet is putting their profits before patients, and it is completely unacceptable…I join you in your frustration and I raise my voice with you to fight for justice.”
Work Won’t Love You Back
Fast food workers in the Fight for $15 went on strike this week for higher pay, safer workplaces, union rights, and respect.
Journalist and author Sarah Jaffe appeared on Democracy Now! this week to discuss this latest wave of labor protests and her article in The Nation, “First Nurses Saved Our Lives—Now They’re Saving Our Health Care.” Jaffe also talked about her latest book Work Won’t Love You Back, which focuses on toxic U.S. work culture.
In her Nation article, Jaffe traced the history of nursing to show how the “image of nursing as an extension of women’s supposedly innate propensity to care” was built-in to the profession from its founding. Hospitals resembled factories in the early 20th century, but labor shortages in the 1930s and 1940s gave nurses more power on the job. Jaffe writes:
Deciding to walk off the job is a hard choice for most workers; when one’s work is producing not car parts but healthy patients, the decision is even harder. Nurses’ strikes can be frowned on by the public—unless, that is, the nurses do the work of organizing the community to support them. In this context, the work that unions like NYSNA have done (providing emergency care after Hurricane Sandy, battling to save beloved community hospitals) builds goodwill that helps them improve their own conditions as well—goodwill that is necessary as Covid-19 conditions push more nurses to the brink.
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