Ramping up pressure on the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, the union for the hospital’s nurses has called for an informational picket line Sept. 10 in the third month of protest that management fired a veteran nurse and disciplined another.
Hahnemann University Hospital is set to close next week, and nurses are furious because they say another hospital is meddling in preventing a potential sale. Two local, unnamed hospitals have reported interest in buying Hahnemann and bringing it back to what it was.
Not every nurse at St. Mary Medical Center supports “Medicare for All” or the political goals of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. But every nurse at that Bucks County hospital soon will pay dues to a labor union that has backed Sanders and government-run health care, now that a majority of their colleagues has voted to join the union.
Multiple planned strikes were called off Monday by nurses after a tentative agreement was reached between the Nurses' Union, SEIU Local 121RN, and their employer, Dignity Health. The agreement came after five intense months of negotiations between nurses and hospital management.
Arrests are expected Monday in the case of a Florida nursing home where 12 elderly patients died after it lost power during a 2017 hurricane, according to defense attorneys. Lawrence Hashish says his client is one of three nurses and an administrator being charged. He said they don’t yet know what the charges are, but that it will likely be some form of manslaughter.
The American healthcare system is plagued by the most expensive costs in the world, as millions of citizens suffer from medical debt and 13.7% of adults have no insurance. In the midst of these issues, nurses across the U.S. are fighting to unionize as a way to take on the for-profit healthcare system that they see as failing to help patients.