Yesterday, National Nurses United, the union representing 175,000 nurses, held a national day of action to protest unsafe working conditions in hospitals. Activities in 11 states and Washington, D.C. demanded that “the hospital industry invest in safe staffing and that President Biden follow through on his campaign promise to protect nurses and prioritize public health,” Bloomberg News reported Jan. 13.
In a statement issued for the protest, NNU president Zenei Triunfo-Cortez wrote, “as we enter year three of the deadliest pandemic in our lifetimes, nurses are enraged to see that, for our government and our employers, it’s all about what’s good for business, not what’s good for public health. Our employers claim there is a ‘nursing shortage,’ and that’s why they must flout optimal isolation times, but we know there are plenty of registered nurses in this country. There is only a shortage of nurses willing to work in the unsafe conditions created by hospital employers and this government’s refusal to impose lifesaving standards.”
NNU argues that its members are trapped in a “vicious cycle” where weakening protections “just drive more nurses away from their jobs.” It charged that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has “ripped away” critical protections for healthcare workers by weakening the CDC’s guidelines on how long a medical professional should remain in isolation after a positive COVID diagnosis and failing to make permanent a June, 2021 provision by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to protect healthcare workers from COVID-19. Nurses are “dumbfounded and enraged” the NNU said, at OSHA and the CDC for rescinding protections and weakening isolation times for healthcare workers.
A nurse working at the University of Chicago Medical Center interviewed by Bloomberg also pointed out that nurses are affected by broader labor shortages “We don’t have food service people … we don’t have supply chain people to deliver our most critical supplies, we don’t have people to repair our equipment. But every job that doesn’t get done by somebody else ends up falling to the bedside nurse. We’re overwhelmed.” (https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/nurses-hold-national-day-of-action-jan-13-to-demand-employers-and-biden-administration-protect-rns)
