A one-day strike by 12,000 RNs at a fourteen Minneapolis-St. Paul hospitals (led by the Minnesota Nurses Association) was the second largest strike in the U.S. in 2010 (and the largest RN strike in U.S. history).
The 28-day Temple University Hospital strike (led by the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals) resulted in 31,500 “days idle,” making it the strike with the second greatest impact–by this one crude measure–of any 2010 strike in the U.S.
And an RN strike in Riverside, CA, (led by an SEIU local), also made the list of large 2010 strikes.
Nurses are on the move. 2009 saw the formation of National Nurses United. With 160,000 members (and growing) the NNU is the largest union of registered nurses in U.S. history. (The 23,000-member Massachusetts Nurses Association — for whom I work as a political and community organizer — is a founding member of the NNU.)
Here in Massachusetts, nurses will engage in two major labor actions this coming week — Feb. 14 at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester; and Feb. 15 at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
Consider joining the nurses and their labor and community supporters. Click here to find out about the Monday afternoon Valentine’s Day picket at St. Vincent Hospital and here for the early evening candlelight vigil at Tufts Medical Center.
Bottom line – nurses are organizing, and organized nurses will do whatever it takes to stand up for themselves, their patients, and their profession.
As a physician we learned early on in our careers that we ignored nurses’s judgment at our peril. It’s time for the public to learn this same wise message.