CHANGE THE LAWS — Flanked by reporters and camera crews, hundreds of nurses from PEF and other unions gather on the steps of the state Capitol on May 4 and listen to the plea of union leaders to improve health care by ending mandatory overtime and increasing staffing levels.  — Photo by Olubiyi Sehindemi

PLEA FOR HELP —  (Below) Nurses call for safe staffing laws to improve medical care, save lives. — Photo by Olubiyi Sehindemi

Rally presses for safer staffing, no forced OT
Nurses unite to fight for better working conditions, patient care

RNs to lawmakers: We need help STAT!

By DEBORAH A. MILES
Busloads of PEF nurses from Long Island to Buffalo were joined by their brothers and sisters from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU 1199) and the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) in a first-of-its-kind joint rally at the state Capitol. Their mission: to send a united message to lawmakers and the governor about chronic understaffing and its ramifications in health care facilities throughout New York. 

The tri-union rally on a windy May 4 day powerfully displayed the workers’ support for the passage of bills that would protect patients and the quality of nursing care they receive.

More than 600 nurses, wearing union T-shirts and carrying banners, marched and chanted advocating for legislation that would stop mandatory overtime and require safe staffing levels in New York’s hospitals.

“One hundred years ago, the rally cry for organized labor was the eight-hour day,” PEF President Roger Benson told the crowd of nurses and reporters. “Isn’t it a shame that in the 21st century, the eight-hour day is not a reality for so many nurses. A nurse who is exhausted and overworked cannot provide the quality of care patients need and nurses want to deliver.

“Our unions may be diverse, but we stand united in this cause,” Benson said. “We will not stand by and see nurses mistreated any longer by profit-first hospital executives.”

Public health alarm
“Nurses assigned to work mandatory overtime are sounding a public health alarm,” PEF co-chair of the Statewide Nurses Committee Deborah Egel told demonstrators. Egel is an RN at the Creedmoor Addiction Treatment Center in Queens.

“Ask the nurse from Howard Park who was mandated to work 20 hours on a ward with autistic children who were on feeding tubes. Or the nurse from SUNY Stony Brook who was mandated to a neo-natal intensive care unit with premature newborns – our most vulnerable population,” Egel said.

“We must remind legislators mandatory overtime is eroding the quality of health care. It leads to errors, and is eroding the health of our nurses and the quality of their family life,” she said.

 “Truck drivers are allowed a certain number of hours they can be on the road, yet nurses who are making life and death decisions every day, are forced to work 16 hours in a row.
“Is this the type of health care our governor is prescribing for New Yorkers?”

Egel said seven other states — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia — passed laws to ensure quality health care.

“The governors of those states cared about their public and cared about quality health care,” she said. 

Pass the bills
NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan B. Lubin also addressed the nurses and said the bill to end mandatory overtime (S.680/A.6251) and the bill to ensure safe staffing ratios (S.3190/A.7200) are pending in the Assembly and Senate Labor Committees. Bills that would bar forced overtime have died in committee in the past.

Other speakers included Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Assembly Members Susan John and Kevin Cahill. Each said quality health care was an important issue to all New Yorkers and supported the nurses’ cause.

PEF Co-chair June Edwards said the nurses would meet with individual lawmakers after the rally to discuss their health care concerns and lobby for the passage of the bills.

“Quality patient care brought the nurses here and there are 500 more nurses today on these steps than when we started the battle three years ago,” Benson said, “If we don’t get relief this year, if the governor doesn’t sign the bills, we’ll be back next year.”