Fifteen thousand nurses from private hospitals in New York City went on strike last Monday (12), in what is the largest strike in the history of the profession in the United States. Every day, large contingents of striking nurses and supporters have been demonstrating in front of hospitals across the city, all controlled by three major healthcare corporations.

Nurses are denouncing low wages, excessive workloads, and the urgent need for new hires. The harsh reality faced by frontline healthcare workers stands in stark contrast to the million-dollar profits earned by the CEOs of the companies that manage these hospitals.

The strike has dominated local and national media coverage and represents one of the most significant mobilizations of the U.S. working class in recent years. Lawmakers affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Alexa Avilés—have joined the picket lines, as has New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Other workers’ organizations, such as the Firefighters Association and the teachers’ union, have also expressed solidarity with the strike.

Brazilian nurses Letícia Faria (director of SindSaúde Paraná) and Ana Paula Teixeira (health analyst at the São Paulo Municipal Health Surveillance Coordination) recorded videos in support of the struggle. Speaking to our column, Teixeira emphasized that “the fight against the precarization of nursing is international. In Brazil, we recently fought for a national wage floor and remain permanently mobilized against the outsourcing of healthcare across the country. Last year, there was a major nursing strike in Panama. These are just a few examples.”

On Friday (16), our column visited the picket line outside Henry & Lucy Moses Hospital, part of the Montefiore Health System network, in the Bronx. On a freezing morning, with the feels-like temperature reaching 14°F, hundreds of strikers and supporters chanted slogans and spoke with local residents. We then spoke with Bianca Maynard, a nurse at the facility and member of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) executive committee at Montefiore. Read the interview below.

FLCMF

Bianca, thank you for the interview and congratulations on the strike! Could you start by introducing yourself?

Biana Maynard

Sure. My name is Bianca Maynard. I’m a registered nurse. I’ve been working at Montefiore for 26 years, and I’ve been a nurse for 17 years. I work in the PCU, which is the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit. I take care of patients after surgery.

I’m also on the executive committee, and we have been meeting with management since September 18, preparing for bargaining. We’ve been negotiating, but we were never able to come to an agreement. As a result, we issued a strike notice on January 2. That gave a 10-day notice, and on January 12 we walked out, because we were still unable to reach an agreement.

FLCMF

What are the main demands of this strike?

Biana Maynard

Our main demands are safe staffing, ending emergency department overcrowding, ending hallway patients, and stronger language on workplace violence.

Many nurses are getting injured, especially in the emergency department, because nurses there can have an unlimited number of patients. For example, if I’m working in the ED and my colleague is also working there, and she has 20 patients and I have 20 patients, when I go on break, she suddenly has to take care of 40 patients. That’s unsafe. There’s no way a nurse can properly care for that many patients.

In emergencies, nurses are forced to choose which patient to respond to first. On top of that, overcrowding means you might have three or four rows of stretchers before you can even reach a patient. That’s extremely unsafe. Nurses trip over stretchers, patients trip, people can’t be examined properly, and there’s no privacy.

That’s what we’re fighting for. We don’t want your mother to come into the emergency room tomorrow and be subjected to these conditions. When nurses go on break, there should be a dedicated nurse assigned to cover a safe number of patients, without doubling assignments, so every patient gets the care they deserve.

We’re out here for the community. We’re out here for our patients. This is not about money. Our patients can’t always advocate for themselves, so we’re advocating for them. We just need management and the media to listen to us, because we know what’s best. We became nurses because we care about our patients.

I’m on the executive committee, and management has not been negotiating fairly. They haven’t even called us back to continue discussions or try to work things out. We’ve been waiting, willing, and ready to meet with them. If they called us right now, we would go in immediately. We’ve been out here every day since the strike began. We just want them to come back to the table and bargain fairly—to do the right thing for the community.

Montefiore is essentially a monopoly. They buy up hospitals and then lock everything in, so patients in this area have no choice but to go to Montefiore. Because of that, they should be providing the best possible care. They should treat these patients the same way they treat patients in White Plains—because the patients here look like me: Brown and Black. Just because Brown and Black patients come here doesn’t mean they should receive subpar care.

We want our patients to receive the same treatment regardless of race, money, or background. That’s why we’re out here. And the community supports us. The fire department has come out. Sanitation workers have come out. Patients are coming out and supporting us. They know the conditions, and they know we’re their voice.

So Montefiore needs to come back to the table so we can get back to caring for our patients. Right now, they have travel nurses who don’t live in this community. They don’t have to see these patients again. I do. I’m from the Bronx—born and raised. This is my community. We all want to get back inside and take care of our patients.

FLCMF

How would you describe the energy on the ground—the energy of the strike—and what are your expectations about winning?

Biana Maynard

The energy is strong. Nurses are fired up. We’re showing up every single day, and we’re eager to get back inside. We’re showing the community, and we’re showing Montefiore, that we’re here.

It’s freezing out here today, but nurses are still showing up. We’re not going to let that deter us, because nurses are strong. We work 12-hour shifts, and sometimes we can’t even go to the bathroom. So this is nothing compared to what we deal with inside.

Our hope is that management will come to their senses and bargain fairly. We’re not asking for anything outrageous. Our demands are centered on patient care, and that should be their priority. This is a hospital—it’s part of the community—and they should be just as concerned about patients as we are.

We’ve been out here for five days now, and we hope management will recognize that and decide to bring us back in so we can sit down, have a rational conversation, and discuss what both sides can do to get us back to work.

Right now, it feels like we’ve been kicked out of our home. There are people inside who don’t know our community. We want to get back into our house—because this is our house. Many of us spend more time here than we do with our families. We want to get back to taking care of our patients. We don’t want to be outside. We were forced out. We want to come back in.

FLCMF

Thank you very much for the interview. Do you have any message for Brazilian nurses or for nurses around the world?

Biana Maynard

We’re hearing that nurses everywhere are standing behind us, and we truly appreciate that support. Nursing is a profession, no matter what anyone says. We’ve been told before that nursing isn’t a profession—but it is. All over the world, across the globe, nurses are united.

So thank you for your support, and please continue to stand with us.3

---