Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here.
Nurses at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD went on a 24-hour strike on July 24. About 600 nurses with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) hit the picket line after 18 months of unsuccessful contract negotiations between hospital administration and the union.
Ascension Saint Agnes nurses were the first hospital-based nurses in Baltimore to unionize in 2023, and now is the first in the city to strike.
The nurses raised concerns for patient safety, citing poor patient staffing ratios—the number of patients assigned to each nurse—and poor procedures related to “floating,” the practice of pulling a nurse from an assigned area to another unit in the hospital. According to the union, more than 10% of nursing staff left the hospital between April 2024 and July 2024 due to these poor working conditions. The union has cited nurses across the country leaving the profession in mass as hospital systems drive up work tempos and suppress wages.
Ascension Healthcare is one of the country’s largest healthcare systems. According to a 2022 exposé in monopoly press the New York Times, Ascension spent years intentionally reducing its staff and patient staffing ratios. Executives gloated in 2019 about slashing approximately $500 million from the hospital monopoly’s labor costs.
Nurses and medical workers across the country, including at Ascension facilities, have gone on strike for better working conditions in recent years. As in Baltimore, striking medical workers nationally are fighting against labor intensification, which is expressed in the patient staffing ratio. Hospital systems began increasing this ratio in recent years, driving up medical staff’s workload amid the developing imperialist economic crisis. Increased patient ratios threaten patients and workers both according to multiple nurses unions. Labor intensification is a general trend across industries as the capitalists offload the costs of their economic crisis onto workers.
Image: Nurses on the picket line at Ascension St Agnes in Baltimore, NNU press release.
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