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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show back here in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined striking nurses in freezing temperatures Tuesday as the action entered a second week. Nearly 15,000 nurses are engaged in the largest nursing strike in New York history, demanding higher wages, fully funded benefits, an increase in staff to manage patients and better workplace protections for hospital workers who face violence on the job. Nurses have accused six private New York hospitals, including Mount Sinai, of refusing to negotiate a fair contract.
This is Senator Sanders speaking from the picket line.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: The people of this country are sick and tired of the greed in the healthcare industry. They’re tired of the drug companies ripping us off, the insurance companies ripping us off and hospital executives getting huge salaries. Don’t tell me you can’t provide a good nurse-staff ratio when you’re paying your CEO at NewYork-Presbyterian $26 million a year, the CEO of Montefiore $16 million a year, Mount Sinai $5 million a year. Don’t tell me you can’t treat nurses with dignity when you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on traveling nurses. So, the people of New York City, the people of Vermont, the people of America love and appreciate our nurses. And today we say to those hospitals: Sit down and negotiate a decent contract. Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Joining Senator Sanders in the subfreezing weather there on the picket line was fellow democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: So, as Bernie said, it’s not about the money. If it was, we would be talking about compensation packages. We’d be talking about the amount of money spent on travel nurses. What this is in fact about is recognizing the worth of each and every nurse in this city.
And so, I am here to say the same thing that I said on the first day of this strike, which is that we are encouraging everyone to return to that bargaining table. Too often when we see a strike, people forget that that is not where workers want to be. A strike is an act of last resort. What workers want is to be back at work. So, what this will mean is making that possible. And so we call on every side to come back to that negotiating table, have a swift and urgent resolution, and to know that no matter what day it is, we will be here, we will be standing with you, and we will be saying the exact same thing. Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: In a minute, we’ll be joined by a nurse who’s a lead organizer of the strike, but first we hear from nurses on the picket line outside Mount Sinai West Hospital here in Manhattan.
NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: One day longer, one day stronger!
NURSES: One day longer, one day stronger! One day longer, one day stronger!
NICOLE RODRIGUEZ: Hi. My name is Nicole Rodriguez. I’m on the executive committee at NYSNA. I work here at Mount Sinai West, and we’re out here striking for our healthcare benefits, along with workplace violence protections and safe staffing. Healthcare benefits, we will not accept any cuts. These nurses do not deserve cuts to their healthcare. We need to be physically and mentally stable to take care of our patients, and healthy — not just stable, but healthy. I can’t provide the kind of care I want to to my patients if I’m not mentally healthy or physically able to.
I work at Mount Sinai West on 14B. It’s a medical surgical telemetry unit. We are also a specialty unit where we provide surgeries for gender reassignments. My daily work is very important. I am the ANCC on my unit. I’m a charge nurse. I take on a full patient assignment while helping out the other nurses on the unit. You know, we get many different kinds of patients, being a medical surgery telemetry unit and also a concierge unit. So, we may have somebody in one room who has COVID; the next room, they just had gender reassignment surgery; and the next room, somebody is on their death bed. So, we’re having to physically take care of patients while emotionally supporting them, as well. And then, myself, I have to maintain and manage the unit as a nurse while still having a full patient assignment. It is very taxing. It’s very hard. I’m doing the best I can. But I’m out here fighting to make it better and easier for everyone.
So, my son and my husband depend on my healthcare, and right now we have no health coverage. Personally, I can’t afford COBRA right now. So, unfortunately, we don’t have any coverage. You know, it does make me very worrisome. I’m out here on this strike, and there’s a lot of people. You know, I’m scared. I’m scared. But it’s worth the sacrifice. If, you know, we’re able to come to a fair contract, it’ll all be worth it, so…
NURSES: Safe nurses save lives! Safe nurses save lives! Safe nurses save lives! Safe nurses save lives!
NELLA PINEDA–MARCON: My name is Nella Pineda-Marcon. I work at Mount Sinai Morningside. I worked there — I worked at Mount Sinai main for 25 years and Mount Sinai Morningside for the past 11, 12 years. I work in child and adolescent psychiatry. I’m currently the head nurse there. They call it the ANCC. I’m a child psychiatry nurse. So, most of the time, the children are left to us by the parents, so we have to make sure that we give the care to the children the way the parents should. And we give that emotional support that we’re supposed to have. I became a nurse because I really want to care for people. In the start, I was still a young child. I liked to help others. And I would like to be in the healthcare, because I really like to help others and make others feel better.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Nella Pineda-Marcon and Nicole Rodriguez. Special thanks to Democracy Now!’s Charina Nadura and Safwat Nazzal.
As the nurses’ strike enters its 10th day, we’re joined now by Michelle Gonzalez, nurse at Montefiore Medical Center, executive committee member of their union, the New York State Nurses Association.
Thanks so much for being with us, Michelle. Explain the significance of this strike, the largest in — is it New York City, New York state history, of the thousands of nurses that are on the picket line?
MICHELLE GONZALEZ: Good morning. Hi, Amy.
Yes, this is the biggest nursing strike in New York City history. We have 16,000 nurses out on strike. I am one of them. I work at Montefiore Medical Center, and I am a proud NYSNA nurse. I am part of our negotiating committee at Montefiore. We’ve been at the table since September trying to negotiate a fair contract. On January 2nd, we placed a 10-day strike notice on the table with the employer in hope that we could receive a fair contract for ourselves and for our patients. Our primary ask and our primary priority is, and has always been, staffing and improving our staffing ratios, so that we can deliver safe patient care, and securing benefits such as our healthcare benefits and pension.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how the pandemic changed nursing? And talk more about how the hospitals are responding. Many people think of hospitals as nonprofits that are struggling.
MICHELLE GONZALEZ: So, I think, with regards to the pandemic, the pandemic was something many nurses worked through that was a very difficult time in our lives. We put our own lives on the line to make sure that we were taking care of our patients. We would come home tired, exhausted and still very proud of the work that we were trying to do with our patients. We were a lot of the times, unfortunately, some of the last people that our patients saw, and we tried to do that with the most amount of dignity and respect to our patients that we could. And I think now it’s sad and disheartening to see how we’re treated by our hospitals. We know that five or six years ago, we were the heroes of New York City, and now we are treated with little to very no respect.
This is by major hospital corporations such as Montefiore, Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian. These hospital corporations have, you know, a surplus of profits, and it can be seen in how well they pay their CEOs. My CEO at Montefiore Medical Center, Dr. Ozuah, he’s currently at a $16.3 million salary.
I think, with that in mind, this fight for nurses isn’t a fight for improved salary. We would like a salary that includes cost-of-living wage increases. But this is a fight for our patients. In Montefiore Medical Center, our patients are chronically in an overcrowded emergency room, which presents unsafe conditions for both the patient and the nurse. They’re also put in what we call hallway beds, which is a stretcher that’s in the hallway that has no access to a real restroom, to a sink to wash their hands. They have to share a sink and restroom with another patient. If that patient colds or has a life-threatening illness in the hallway, we do not have access to lifesaving equipment like oxygen and suction, which in an emergency is necessary.
And it’s especially frustrating because our CEOs in these hospitals can afford to make the investments into these hospitals and to improve the conditions that the patients are in, and improve the conditions, therefore, that the workers exist in, because it’s not just nursing. Our nursing attendants, our respiratory therapists throughout the hospital, our doctors are facing the same working conditions when we have overcrowded emergency rooms and hallway patients.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Gonzalez, can you explain what precautions are being taken if ICE were to go into hospitals? Can they? How are you protected?
MICHELLE GONZALEZ: So, one of our other priorities included in this contract is to have ICE officers not be allowed into our facilities. Unfortunately, our hospitals have not bargained in good faith to make sure that safeguards are put in place to protect our patients. In the Bronx, we have a very high population of Black and Brown people, and we have a population of immigrants that we are trying to protect and make sure that they feel safe coming into hospitals.
And at this point, we’ve spent a year, since the beginning of the Trump administration beginning to start some of these ICE raids and to increase the level of ICE activity — we’ve spent the last year trying to build power with our brothers and sisters in CIR, the intern residents, the doctors’ union and 1199, which is another union that facilitates our other workers in the hospital, to fight the hospital to get those safeguards in place. And we’ve been unsuccessful, which is why we’ve brought it into our contract demands. But still, to this point, they have not negotiated —
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle, we only have 30 seconds. The significance of Bernie Sanders and, mostly, the New York mayor standing on the pick line with you, Zohran Mamdani?
MICHELLE GONZALEZ: Yes, ma’am. I think the significance is that, you know, we have the support of many different people. But I think the most important support comes from our patients, our community. I really hope our community knows that this fight is as much for us as it is for them.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Michelle Gonzalez is a nurse at Montefiore Medical Center and an executive committee member of the New York State Nurses Association, the union representing nurses. We’ll continue to follow what happens.
Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Nicole Salazar, Sara Nasser, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud and Safwat Nazzal. Our executive director is Julie Crosby.
I’ll be speaking in Fort Lee after the showing of Steal This Story, Please! on January 29th at the Barrymore Film Center. Go to our website at democracynow.org. The film is showing, about Democracy Now!, at 7:30, January 29th. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
