In their third walkout, New Orleans nurses say chronic understaffing and violence in the workplace are only getting worse.
With Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” as a soundtrack, nurses at New Orleans’s University Medical Center walked off the job for the third time, picketing along the city’s Canal Street thoroughfare earlier this month.
“We will picket, shout, bargain, petition, and strike again, and again, and again until the nurses win the first contract!” Terry Mogilles, an orthopedic trauma clinic nurse, told a rapt crowd on May 1. The crowd comprised about 100 nurses and their supporters, with many of the nurses wearing scrubs or red shirts with white lettering reading “We Will Strike for Our Patients!” Mogilles and roughly 600 University Medical Center nurses voted to unionize with National Nurses United in December 2023. They are in their 16th month of union representation but say their employer is stalling on a contract that would actually improve their jobs.
Observers say nurses may be waiting even longer. On average, healthcare unions go around 17 months before obtaining first contracts. Today, the nurses not only have to overcome their employer’s resistance but also the downstream effects of the Trump administration’s policy changes.