Sen. Bernie Sanders electrified hundreds of nurses jammed into a Rutgers music theater in New Brunswick Friday on the 85th day of their strike against Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
Sanders (I-VT) was the only senator at this field hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which he chairs. The event played more like a union pep rally than a Senate committee hearing, and Sanders made clear whose side he’s on. “It is way past time for hospital executives to treat you with the respect and dignity that you need,” he told the cheering nurses.
Hospital executives were no-shows at the hearing, instead sending written testimony that said they “cannot risk anything taken out of context,” concerned it could impact negotiations.
A panel of nurses spent 90 minutes talking emotionally about why they feel so abused by a system in which too few nurses struggle to care for too many patients.
“The anguish you feel, the dread, the anxiety this causes every single day … and there’s no one to help,” said pediatric nurse Carol Tanzi. Judy Danella, president of the Steelworkers Local 4-200 union, which represents the nurses, said, “We are no longer willing to be compliant to a broken system where management puts profit over patients. These so-called nonprofit hospitals have more than enough money to invest in their workforce to ensure we have safe staffing.”
Sanders asked how the hospital could spend more than $100 million on traveling nurses during the strike and $17 million on its CEO’s annual salary but won’t improve nurse-to-patient ratios. He said, “Nurses have told me that they are unable to provide the quality care they want to provide and the care their patients deserve. And the reason for that is the totally inadequate nurse-patient ratios they are forced to deal with.”
In a statement, RWJBarnabas Health CEO Mark Madigan called Sanders’ assertions “inaccurate and misleading,” adding, “RWJUH has safe staffing guidelines in place that are derived from national, evidence-based practice by peer academic medical centers.”
Hospital negotiators claimed they’ve made generous salary offers to the nurses and agreed to give them an extra $20 an hour if staffing ratios fail to meet set standards. But the union members voted to continue the strike.
Hospital executives say they think a contract is attainable “in the near future.” But no new talks are scheduled.
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th), who sat in solidarity with striking nurses, said the U.S. needs federal minimal staffing requirements. “There needs to be face-to-face negotiations between the hospital administration and the union. I think that would make a difference,” Pallone said.
— Editor’s note: RWJBarnabas Health is an underwriter of NJ Spotlight News.
