NY Nurse November 2015

NYSNA keeps up fight for $15

NYSNA is helping keep the momentum going toward a $15 wage floor. At a November 10 rally that was part of a national day of action, Anne Bové, RN and NYSNA President of the HHC/Mayorals Executive Council, spoke out about how all workers, including the lowest paid workers...

[The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2011) is a powerful indictment of racism in the criminal justice system by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights attorney, who directed the Racial Justice Project for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern...

NYSNA Negotiating Committees at Interfaith Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center recently reached tentative agreements.

RNs at Interfaith Medical Center reached an agreement that is a win for the hospital’s nurses and patients. On top of economic gains, the hospital agreed to add 20 RN...

On November 18, NYSNA scored another win: case managers at Staten Island University Hospital voted by more than an 80 percent margin for union representation. The 38 case managers will join 1,000 RNs already represented by NYSNA at the hospital, which is now part of the North Shore-LIJ network. Pat...

In a show of support for quality patient care, town boards in Amherst and Hamburg both passed resolutions in November in support of safe staffing legislation. Together with Cheektowaga, three Erie County towns have joined with the City of Buffalo in passing resolutions urging the New York State...

The Protest of Assignment started to take shape in 1982. It dovetailed with a classification system for acuities. There was testimony before the New York City Council. Reliability and validity tools were added to the patient classification system and refinements continued. Within NYSNA, the “POA”...

A NYSNA delegation attended the fall “SOMOS el Futuro” conference in Puerto Rico November 4 - 8, where they saw up close the effects of Puerto Rico’s current economic and healthcare crises. Michelle Gonzalez, RN, Montefiore Medical Center, was one of three NYSNA nurses who participated. “This was my...

The City of Buffalo’s Common Council passed a resolution on November 24, calling on state lawmakers to pass the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act. NYSNA members congregated at Buffalo’s City Hall to bear witness to the vote. Councilman David Rivera, the resolution’s sponsor, said, “This is about...

NYSNA member and St. Elizabeth Medical Center RN Ethel Mathis traveled from Utica to Pittsburgh, PA, to attend the “Oil Train Response 2015” conference and training held November 11-13. The conference addressed the regulatory and social impact of oil trains that pass unchecked through our cities and...

All over New York State, NYSNA nurses are pressing hard on safe staffing issues. While the campaign for passage of the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act in the legislature is stepped up, nurses are taking actions in their hospitals to address patient safety concerns, and they’re achieving success.

Long Island NYSNA members are attending Inter-regional meetings in increasing numbers this year as word gets out that the new meeting format gives members an enhanced role in setting agendas and presenting content. A record number of members participated in the most recent Inter-regional Meeting on...

NYSNA welcomed 141 Nurse Practitioners and 10 Midwives from New York City’s Mount Sinai Medical Center on November 6, following an overwhelming vote in favor of union representation. (Eight Midwives organized and two new Midwives were hired.) These new members join 150 NPs, 18 recently organized...

At last month’s Convention, NYSNA nurses took part in an extraordinary community action by joining with Saratoga Springs activists and residents, state legislators and environmentalists to protest the transport of crude oil and hazardous fracking chemicals along train tracks that cut through...

In spite of a torrential downpour, massive flooding and traffic nightmares that make NYC famous, more than 100 nurses showed up for our Bronx Inter-regional Meeting on November 19. Turnouts in other parts of the state are also quite high. No one is busier than a nurse — so why are people so...