NY Nurse: Winter 2021

On December 1 and 2, close to 200 nurses at Montefiore New Rochelle hospital joined together and went on strike. They were determined to make their voices heard on the critical issue of safe staffing. For two years of contract negotiations, including this year when the pandemic and its latest resurgence reappeared in force, the hospital ignored NYSNA nurses and the alarm they sounded about serious understaffing at the hospital. Virtually the entire RN workforce voted to strike.

Albany Med nurses have shown their grit over and over again. After months of health and safety organizing, documenting unsafe practices, and exposing AMC’s dangerous COVID practices, the hospital is finally dropping the mandate to reuse N95s up to 20 times.

Now nurses receive an N95 after donning and doffing 5 times, or if their respirator is soiled — a critical win on their way to a first contract. Another significant change in hospital conditions is testing for virus for all patients.

We are living through unprecedented times, a moment unlike any other most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Events in our hospitals, our communities and our nation are unfolding fast: an insurrection in our nation’s capital, unemployment the likes of which this country has not seen since the Depression, and a worldwide pandemic that is surging again through the neighborhoods of New York. Taken together, they place before us a set of profound challenges.

As the nation reels amidst the fallout from the most contentious election in history and the most devastating pandemic in memory, how do we heal as a rational community in the face of the continued threat of COVID, its unknown long-term sequelae, possible future pandemic strains, vaccine distribution, and assorted conspiracy theories, many without an ounce of evidence?