Nurses at University Medical Center began their two-day strike ahead of the Super Bowl this Wednesday (Feb. 5) by picketing outside the hospital’s Canal Street entrance. Space was limited on the sidewalk due to a new fence that limits pedestrian access to hospital grounds.
The strike arose out of a growing frustration among nurses over the slow pace of contract negotiations between the union and hospital administration, union members said.
Although the strike will only last two days, nurses will be without work for three additional days, until the Monday after the Super Bowl. Hospital administrators said that LCMC Health has to staff the hospital with temporary nurses for at least five days due to the busy tourism week.
Endoscopy nurse and bargaining team member Hailey Dupré said the strike will be a “big financial hit” for some nurses, especially as many of them lost wages when a historic winter snowstorm shut down the city for almost a week last month.
To help ease this financial burden, some nurses enlisted the help of the New Orleans Rank and File Project, a worker organizing coalition, to start a GoFundMe. The strike fund has raised almost $18,000 as of publication time, a couple of thousand shy of its $20,000 goal.
“When the community shows up and says, ‘We support you. We understand what you’re doing is important and here is money to help with that,’ it just means a lot,” nurse Mike Robertshaw told Verite News at a sign-making party the evening before the strike. “It just means that we’re not in this alone.”
Dupré said watching the donations come in made her emotional.
“They see our struggle as also their struggle,” Dupré said. “Because anyone can be a patient at any time, and we can treat our patients better when we have a better work environment.”
Nurses have been advocating for safer workplace conditions and more nurses per patient for months now. After the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street, nurses also want to enshrine an emergency response protocol into their contract. But after almost a full year of negotiations, a contract still hasn’t been inked.
LCMC Health did not respond to questions about the nurses’ claims surrounding administrators stalling negotiations. But a hospital spokesperson told Verite News that the hospital set up the fence last Thursday (Jan. 30) to provide protection during Super Bowl week, and that it does the same ahead of Mardi Gras. In the same statement, they also said they left a portion of hospital grounds on Canal Street accessible for the strike.
“We are here today because we have been pushed to the breaking point, because our voices have been ignored, our work has been undervalued, and our patient safety has been put at risk,” Dupré said in a speech at the strike. “We’re exhausted, burned out and still asked to do more with less.”