Kathleen L, NYSNA, Brooklyn, NY
15,000 private-sector nurses walked off the job last month, marking the largest healthcare strike New York City has ever seen. The nurses demanded what should be an established baseline: safe staffing, fair wages, full healthcare coverage and pensions, benefits for retired nurses aged 60 to 65, and safer workplaces.
Four RCA comrades joined the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) picket line at Columbia Presbyterian. Barricades were set up on either side of the street, far from the hospital doors—and the foot traffic.
We engaged with nurses in the crowd, asking about the conditions they faced on the job and what they thought it would take to win the strike.
Several of the other New York-Presbyterian campuses were not on strike because their contracts, by design, expire later in the year. We started asking nurses what they thought about some hospitals striking, while others were not. Effectively, it amounts to half of the union unintentionally scabbing on the other half. Many of the nurses didn’t even know this was happening.
After about an hour, the union leaders marched the strikers around the block, supposedly to bring them to an area with food and drinks. One comrade was in the middle of a conversation and stayed behind, witnessing two large buses filled with scab nurses unloading near where the picket line had been.
Once the scab buses were gone, the leaders marched the rank and file back to the front of the building. Mere coincidence? Or an intentional tactic to keep the union nurses from seeing scabs flooding into the building?
Comrade Dave got talking to a nurse practitioner about it. He asked, “What if the union blocked the entrance and made a political appeal to the scabs? They could say, ‘We’re out here fighting for better wages, benefits, and conditions. We can only win if you’re on our side. If we win, you win. We can win better wages and conditions and wages when we struggle together.’” The nurse enthusiastically supported Dave’s suggestion, and said she wanted to bring it to her union delegate.
Comrades got some good experience talking to workers on the picket line and seeing first hand how union bureaucrats operate. Just as in 1938, “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” We must continue to build our party and help our fellow workers build the leadership we deserve!