Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee (KEC) correspondent
In a capitalist system, even essential services like healthcare are viewed as a means of profit. This has a detrimental impact on both patients and healthcare workers. In all capitalist countries, healthcare workers are forced to step out to protect their own interests and those of patients. Ensuring quality healthcare for all is the state’s responsibility. A state that fails to fulfil this responsibility must be replaced with the rule of toilers—there is no alternative.
On the morning of 12 January, nurses at Mount Sinai, Montefiore, and New York-Presbyterian hospitals unitedly protested and stopped work. Marching at 6 am on a frigid winter morning, they chanted slogans highlighting their demands. This strike was one of the largest nurses’ strikes in the city’s history.
The nurses were protesting the failure of contract negotiations with officials, which had been ongoing for several months. Hospital management refused to address the core issues the New York State Nursing Association has been fighting for: sufficient staffing for patients, healthcare benefits for nurses, and protection of nurses from violent workplace attacks. The nurses’ association reported that although hospitals are making substantial profits, they are threatening to discontinue or drastically cut nurses’ health benefits and roll back staffing standards.
In 2021, New York State passed a law mandating the formation of committees to develop department-wise staffing plans in each hospital, including a requirement for at least one nurse for every two patients in critical care units. This was a result of the severe shortage of nurses experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this law, hospitals remain understaffed. Nurses had staged a strike in 2023 to enforce these standards across all hospital units.
Nurses are now on strike again because hospital managements are backtracking on those standards. Furthermore, despite a rise in violent attacks on healthcare workers in the workplace, hospital managements have ignored demands to strengthen their security. Workers’ concerns have been exacerbated by the shooting at Mount Sinai Hospital in November and the deadly shooting at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Brooklyn earlier in January.
Like in the United States, nurses in India are also fighting for their demands. In the past few years, nurses have gone on strike in several cities across states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. Approximately 30,000 nurses working in government hospitals, represented by 47 branches of the Maharashtra State Nursing Association (MSNA), went on an indefinite strike demanding an end to the recruitment of nurses on temporary contracts, an increase in their allowances, immediate filling of vacant positions, and reduction in their workload.
Approximately 55,000 nurses working in all government hospitals and dispensaries in Rajasthan protested in support of their 11-point demands. However, the government paid no attention to the nurses’ demands, leaving them with no option but to go on strike. The protesting nurses’ main demands included prioritizing nursing education and advanced departmental nursing training; immediately filling vacant nursing faculty positions; equalizing salaries and allowances with those of central government institutions; regularizing contract nurses and completely banning recruitment through placement agencies; ensuring the protection of all rights of nursing officers, nursing tutors, and principals; implementing a timely promotion policy; establishing nursing colonies by allocating residential plots at concessional rates; banning the use of nurses for additional hospital duties; establishing a separate nursing directorate, etc.
Thousands of nurses working in rural areas of Madhya Pradesh and in district hospitals in Khandwa, Mandsaur, Satna, Burhanpur, Chhatarpur, Vidisha, and Khargon went on strike. The Nursing Officers’ Association stated that demands such as pay disparity, promotions, and recruitment to new positions were long pending.
According to data from the Union Health Ministry, India has only 1.7 nurses per 1,000 people, which is less than the minimum number of nurses recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Due to the lack of basic facilities and inadequate salaries, many Indian nurses have preferred to seek employment outside the country. As a result, over 6.4 million Indian nurses are currently working abroad, including in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Gulf countries.
India’s capitalist state does not value the crucial services provided by nurses; on the contrary, it deprives them of all basic amenities and shows indifference to their demands, intimidating and threatening them during their struggles. Only in a state established by workers and farmers will the demands of nurses be fully met.