By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of the Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, we revisit the United Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 strike against the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ as it enters its third week. The union is pressing its demands for an accountability mechanism for staff to patient ratios. Local 4-200 Union President Judy Danella and Debbie White, RN, president HPAE, New Jersey largest nurses’ union, talk about legislation pending in Trenton which would create a state standard for nurse staffing that would put patients ahead of hospital profits.

After the 2004 enactment of a similar bill in California, researchers documented improved patient outcomes, reduced re-hospitalizations and workplace injuries as well as increased nurse retention.

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 is Connecticut (27,926), New York (18,784), and Pennsylvania (16,430).

In the latter half of the show, James Henry, a New York based economist, attorney and investigative journalist provides an update on Holtec International’s plan to dump 1.3 million gallons of radioactive wastewater from the Indian Point Nuclear reactor into the Hudson River. Henry warns that legislation signed recently by Gov. Kathy Hochul that seeks to ban Holtec from dumping merely imposes fines and not criminal sanctions. Henry maintains the “new law authorizes trivial fines for dumping radioactive water, making it logical and lucrative to dump and — maybe —be fined.” Dr. Joe Fennelly is also remembered. 

Listen to the entire show below: