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1,700 NJ nurses could go on strike Friday amid wave of health worker walkouts
By
Karen Yi
Published Aug 2, 2023
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By
Karen Yi
Published Aug 2, 2023
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The 1,700 nurses of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick could strike Friday morning unless their union and hospital administrators reach a new contract deal.
The looming work stoppage at a trauma center that treats more than 3 million people each year comes the same year as other strikes in New York City and across the U.S., with health care workers demanding better staffing ratios and pay.
“There's no question that the pandemic has accelerated people leaving the [health care] profession in higher numbers than ever,” said John August, director of healthcare labor relations at The Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University.
August said that’s contributing to the recent wave of labor actions across the industry.
This year, nurses’ unions accounted for about a third of major work stoppages of 1,000 employees or more, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
New Jersey hasn’t had any health care worker strikes this year, according to data compiled by Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. But the union representing nurses at RWJ University Hospital said they’re ready to walk out at 7 a.m. Friday. It would be the first nurses’ strike at the hospital since 2006.
“The time now is to say we need to have safe staffing so that these nurses stay at the bedside,” said Judy Danella, president of the United Steelworkers Local No. 4-200 and a 28-year nurse.
Danella said the union wants better staffing levels to reduce the burden on nurses caring for too many patients at once. It’s also seeking a three-year freeze on insurance premiums and increased pay.
“Some of the nurses in the medical intensive care unit, they are tripled up,” meaning one nurse has three patients, she said.
The union wants a two-patient-for-one-nurse ratio for the intensive care floor, and other ratios set depending on the level of medical intervention needed to ensure patients are receiving the best care, Danella said.
A hospital spokesperson said its officials are still willing to negotiate and hope to reach a fair resolution. Should a strike take place, the hospital has plans to bring in contract nurses to make sure care is not interrupted.
Danella said negotiations began in April and union members have since twice-rejected tentative agreements, voting one down by 96% in June and another by 75% in July.
Late last month, they voted to give the hospital a 10-day strike notice.
She said a worsening nursing shortage and the pandemic have made the union’s push for staffing ratios more urgent, but nurses have been pushing for better staffing requirements for 15 years.
Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law mandating staffing ratios inside nursing homes during the pandemic, but New Jersey doesn’t have a law regulating staffing levels more broadly and such laws remain rare, experts said.
August said California is the only state that has enacted nurse to staffing ratios but those measures fix only part of the industry’s problems.
“While you may have more nurses, you also are not necessarily solving those larger systemic issues of why people burn out, why the work is so difficult,” he said. “Even with more nurses on those units, you're still seeing a tremendous amount of pressure, which I think is attributable to the fact that not enough work has been done to really engage nurses in the actual processes of how care is delivered.”
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Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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