By Bob Hennelly

The corporate news media has been working overtime to drum up fear and anxiety in the population alternating between their fixation on the border and the supposed great perils of undocumented immigration — and breathless stories about the completely manufactured beltway crisis over the impending debt ceiling. They want us to be fearful and in the insecure mindset where we see a world of scarcity.

Meanwhile, multinational corporations and Wall Street continue to get over, gobbling up more and more of the abundant wealth our economy generates as our nation’s healthcare system falls deeper and deeper into crisis.

What we seem to really have is a shortage of labor which our pyramid tax system punishes by taxing it at a higher rate than idle wealth. If you want a robust economy that lifts up the entire population, what you need to foster is a caring economy that’s about healing and meeting the basic human needs of our entire population.

On Thursday May 11, the day President Biden declared an end to the COVID emergency, I was down in Trenton where hundreds of union nurses were rallying to demand enactment of nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as was done in California in 2004, which studies have documented greatly improved patient outcomes, workplace safety, infection control and nurse retention — while actually saving the healthcare system money.

 The renewed push for the staffing requirements comes as a national survey predicted New Jersey would be shy 11,400 nurses by 2030, ranking it in the top ten states with a severe shortfall. Also, in that crisis mix, Connecticut (27,926), New York (18,784), and Pennsylvania (16,430). 

In this edition of Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour we are going to look at how the lack of proper healthcare staffing is undermining the caring economy here in New York City resulting in unnecessary human suffering and degrading the quality of healthcare even as the price of that care continues to explode.

We will speak with Vincent Variale, president of  DC 37 Local 3621, which represents the city’s FDNY EMS Officers about the chronic understaffing and undervaluing of the service his members provide the entire city 24/7 often at great personal risk to themselves.

In the second half of the show, we will visit with Kristle Simms-Murphy, an RN and family nurse practitioner from Jacobi Hospital that’s part of the city’s Health + Hospital Corporation, the city’s municipal hospital system. Kristle is on the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) bargaining team that’s working to get a fair contract for the several thousand nurses that keep that system running, providing health care to New York City's entire population regardless of their economic situation or immigration status. 

HHC's nurses make $20,000 less than their counterparts in other New York City Hospitals which currently has a 25 percent vacancy rate in terms of staff nursing positions. Incredibly, the city spent $197 million in just the first 3 months of 2022 to fill that gap with traveling nurses. 

Listen to the entire show below: