Writers and actors aren't the only workers who went on strike this summer. Nationwide, nurses' unions are asking
In July, around 900 nurses at Rochester General Hospital in New York voted to strike after nine months of negotiations with management. The Rochester Union of Nurses and Allied Professionals moved to strike for 48 hours in August before returning to the negotiation table with their employers, demanding
Unfortunately, their story isn't unique.
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Nurses across the country have held strikes, whether it was a one-day strike at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Marina del Rey, California, or an 11-day strike at Loretto Hospital in Chicago. The demands are the same for nurses everywhere: lower patient-to-staff ratios so nurses can better care for their patients and produce better
"Nursing is a calling — we're all in this profession because we want to take care of people," says Taylor Warner, a pediatric registered nurse at Rochester General Hospital and a member of the Rochester Union of Nurses. "I've cried so many times in my car in the parking garage because I just felt so bad that I'm physically unable to do everything I possibly can for that patient."
Nurses report unbearable staffing conditions
Warner works in the pediatric medical-surgical unit, where the patient-to-staff ratio should be no higher than one nurse for every four patients; Warner has seen ratios of 6-to-1. The hospital even counts licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, within these ratios, despite these nurses being limited in the kind of judgment calls and care they can legally provide — as opposed to registered nurses or RNs, who have the authority to assess and administer treatments.
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Stacey Judson, a fellow union member who has been at Rochester General for 24 years and an emergency room RN for 12 years, has seen ratios as high as 10-to-1. And while their employer blames the national staffing shortage, Judson believes the talent is out there.
"There's no shortage of nurses, but a shortage of nurses who want to work in these conditions," says Judson. "We've just been seeing the quality of patient care not being what it should be, and poor outcomes for our patients because of that. It's time for employers to make a change."
The nursing shortage: fact or fiction?
Warner and Judson agree that hospitals brought the staffing shortage on themselves due to poor pay and harsh working conditions. But with nearly 5.2 million RNs nationwide, nurses still represent the largest healthcare profession in the U.S., according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. In other words, it's not too late to attract and retain the nurses needed to lower ratios, improve working conditions and attract more talent, underlines Jessica Sites, a former Florida RN who worked in labor and delivery for over 20 years. Sites now advocates for nurses by sharing her story at in-person strikes and rallies and through social media.
"If these hospitals are willing to treat nurses with respect and have good, safe ratios, nurses will come back," says Sites. "But nurses, like myself for example, got burned out after all these years of things just getting progressively worse and worse."
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But for Sites, it's clear hospitals don't want to hire more nurses — it's just another corner to cut to add more money to executives' and shareholders' pockets, she says.
Notably, nonprofit hospital CEOs make far more than other nonprofit CEOs, averaging approximately $700,000 a year compared to the standard range of $90,000 and $250,000. The CEO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the sister hospital to Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital where nurses went on strike, made $5.7 million in 2020, during the onset of the pandemic.
"I've had some nurses say there's no job postings, despite hospitals saying that they are trying to fill positions," says Sites. "These hospitals are trying to work more on bare bones, bringing more patients and having less staff. It's not safe for patients primarily, but it's also not safe for nurses who are putting their licenses at risk. They could possibly injure a patient and their sanity."
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To add insult to injury, nurses' wages have remained mostly stagnant in the last decade. Research from the North Carolina Department of the Treasurer found that while CEOs saw their salaries increase by 700% within a few years, nurses only saw a 15% increase over the span of an entire decade.
"The [hospital] will say that they would love to give nurses a 3% or 4% increase, but it's just not in the budget," says Sites. "You busted your butt all year, you worked through COVID, but they can only give you 1% raise. And yet, you see CEOs getting multi-million dollar bonuses."
Nurses are battling workplace violence
As if poor pay and unsafe staffing ratios weren't bad enough, nurses also have to contend with threats and violence against themselves, other staff members and patients on a daily basis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience workplace violence than employees in other industries. Sites, Warner and Judson can agree that it's only getting worse.
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"We're seeing an uptick in hostility and aggression and violence in emergency medicine — just in this past month, I know six co-workers who have been assaulted," says Judson. "Two years ago, I was assaulted and hospitalized."
Sites notes that hospitals, for the most part, try to push these incidents under the rug, refusing to openly discuss it, let alone create better policies to minimize their frequency. When someone gets hurt by a patient, nurses often feel unprotected and at a loss on what to do, says Sites. The high ratios only make it harder.
"I heard one nurse was [hit] in the head with an IV pole; I heard from another that a patient jumped out his window because no one was watching. Stuff like this happens every day," says Sites. "And there's just no true protocol to know what to do as a healthcare worker."
Speaking out against hospitals
Unless protected by a union, many nurses don't feel they can safely share their stories with the public, for fear of backlash from their employer, explains Sites. This means nurses' experiences with workplace violence, unsafe ratios and struggles with mental health and burnout are often discussed as data points rather than personal stories.
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"Hospitals have these big social media policies that can be interpreted in any way that they want to," says Sites. "So there's this fear of somebody in the administration seeing something you said that they feel put the hospital in a bad light. Nurses are scared to speak out because the bottom line is, they don't want to lose their jobs."
Hospitals don't seem to be big fans of unions either. Rochester General, for example, hired a union-busting law firm to spread anti-union messaging, says Warner. Union advocacy group LaborLab found that Rochester Regional Health, the health system Rochester General is part of, paid the firm $1.3 million, making them a top spender, nationwide, on such services last year.
"Our hospital was the third highest spender in union busting in the year of 2022," she says. "They definitely were trying with their every effort to prevent us from winning that union election. They wanted to prevent us from getting a seat at that table."
But nurses like Warner, Judson and Sites are determined to make hospitals hear them. After surviving the onset of COVID and continuing to put their lives and families' lives at risk in an ongoing pandemic, nurses are demanding change to happen now, Sites stresses.
Still, Warner and Judson admit it's not an easy decision to strike. Nurses want to care for their patients, but they know nothing will get better if they don't take a stand.
"After 24 years, it broke my heart not to be at [my patients'] bedside," says Judson. "It takes a lot to pull a nurse away. But when leadership no longer wants to bargain in good faith, and we no longer feel like we have the ability to protect our patients and ourselves, we are going to push for everything we need to care for our patients. We are not backing down."
