It Could Happen Here - The Great Minnesota Nurses Strike

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Mia talks with Danielle, a nurse at Methodist Hospital and a steward for the Minnesota Nurses Association, about the massive nurses strike in Minnesota and the conditions of nurses in the US. https://mnpatientsbeforeprofits.com/act-now/ https://www.leftvoice.org/hear-a-striking-minnesota-nurse-speak-out-about-the-exploitative-working-conditions-nurses-face/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It is also a podcast that is very, very often about strikes and somewhat surprisingly this is this is an episode that is not about the giant rail strike that everyone was focused on that didn't happen um and the reason it's not about okay i mean obviously it's not about that because it didn't happen but the other reason it's not about that is that there was another giant strike that was really i think ignored by both sort of the media and the people who normally would be following strikes that was happening at about the same time. And that is a massive 15,000 person nurses strike up in Wisconsin. And to talk with us about that.

Wait, did I say that right? Minnesota. Did I confuse Wisconsin and Minnesota? Oh, my God. I always do this. that wait did i say that right minnesota did i could i could i confuse wisconsin and minnesota oh my god i always do this they did threaten a strike you are yeah for different reasons i don't there's some part of my brain that never quite like figured out which one was wisconsin and which one was minnesota and it just like flips them in my mind they're just like they're just the state that's sort of over there from illinois i know it's the midwest this is an accursed place which again i don't i don't really have an excuse because like i'm from here

like i've i've i've lived not in the midwest for like six months now wow okay like a year of my life when i was like unbelievably small child. But yeah, it is it is. Yeah, there's been a bunch of strikes in Minnesota. And with me to talk about the strikes that are not happening in Wisconsin is Danielle, who is a nurse at Methodist Hospital and a steward for the Minnesota Nurses Association. Danielle, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for coming on um okay so i guess the the first thing that i want to talk about is the kind of strike that you all were doing because this is something that i i've seen a lot with nurses strikes but i don't think people who aren't in nurses unions like talk about very much which is basically doing a three-day strike or doing a strike that's for for a set number of days but it's not indefinite um and i wanted to ask about that specifically as a tactic a bit yeah absolutely um it's not uncommon in the healthcare sector at all to do one day two day day, three day, five day, seven day strikes. Um, we usually leave like an open-ended strike for kind of a, a last-ditch effort, um, to get the employer's

attention. Um, so there's a lot to coordinate to compensate for a three-day strike. Um, it affects everyone's job at the hospital. And then after three days, they have to flip everything back. That type of disruption in capital has been really effective across the nation. So we're hoping that they hear us loud and proud but it's challenging they have a lot of money yeah yeah and i i think from what i've talked to other nurses about this strike and also other people have done nurses strikes is that like there's like a huge pool of scabs yeah which makes things really hard and is is it is it the case that part of the reason why you do one of these limited strikes is that it's it's a lot harder for them to coordinate

like bringing in scabs for a limited amount of time than it would be for like hiring them full time for a indefinite strike yeah exactly so travel I mean, they are those strike nurses come in strictly just for those three days. They are oriented for, you know, a few hours prior to starting at 7am on Monday. entire facility and since we are gone the only ones left to orientate our managers or any um nurses that have to stay for whatever reason we really didn't have many at all across the line um so it just compromises um patient safety and care in general yeah yeah there's no way to create teamwork with just three days of brand new nurses um so just um the hospital is just more accountable for system errors um they try to keep those issues um as internal as possible and not disclose them to the public but yeah there's a lot that happened you know they've it's funny all the media reports are like or we're just like straight up printing press releases being like there's been no internal disruptions i'm like i don't believe that like

there's no way there's like it's just not true they are just lying so lying and to prepare for us to go on strike i mean they tried their hardest to discharge as many patients as possible sunday prior to our strike to empty out hospitals the thing is like you can't just you're not a magician you can't make sick people go away yeah um there was a lot of readmissions because of that you're discharging people too quickly um i know at the children's hospitals they actually um like shuttled 44 children out to other surrounding hospitals to because they couldn't get enough travelers to work you can't get 15 000 yeah travelers so that's what they did to try to undermine us.

It's a lot of moving things around. And I'm hoping the public, there's an uproar with the public about this. Yeah. I don't know who's paying for, you know, the cost of shipping kids to different hospitals. Yeah. I assume the hospital is not going to pay for it.

Yeah. Oh God. So, yeah, I guess we should move into, like, how we got to the point where 15,000 nurses went on strike, which I think, I mean, it's certainly the largest nurse strike, like, in the private sector I can remember. Like, I think it's one of the largest the U.S. has ever had. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Can we talk about, i get i and i know this this is there's also sort of a broader question here about like what the u.s health care system

looks like in year two of this plague in the sector that's already been sort of just decimated by like incredibly venal profit-seeking greedy corporations but yeah yeah so what what what what what have been the conditions that have been leading up to this strike that got this many people off of the line um i mean our health care system has been unstable um for quite some time hospitals have been consolidating so much, like closing clinics and facilities just to maximize profit. Their whole goal is kind of like how airlines overbook for flights. They create like an artificial hospital beds shortage in order to maximize profit. So they've been doing that for years. And then also just buying up little

hospitals to control the market more. They've also are starting their own insurance companies just to double dip in the community's wallets. So that's been going on prior to the pandemic. Pandemic hit, they were not ready. They't have enough ppe at all because it's not there's no um it's not financially incentivized to have extra ppe on hand that's their logic i i remember in the beginning of the pandemic like my aunt and uncle work for a hospital and like we were trying to get the masks and like yeah we wound up like we were like doing contracts with like like my like literally my family in china was like i know a guy who knows a guy who could like who who like has a mass manufacturing thing it was oh god it was so grim it was yeah, it was a mess. And we didn't have enough PPE.

We had to reuse stuff constantly. And we were never compensated for it either. We just were forced to work harder and longer for the same pay. And now hospitals are trying to normalize that staffing shortage and say, well, that's it. That's, you know, so you just have to work with what we're giving you. And this shortage is just, it's causing unnecessary medical errors and deaths and it's just a disservice to our community. and it's just a disservice to our community. Yeah, it's going kind of down a dark path. So I think all of that during the pandemic,

hospitals really showed their true colors. And I know the nurses really realized that the hospital is only there to just like fatten their wallets. They're not there for us. They're not, the goal is to make us all leave the bedside and just outsource all of their employees. You would escape all liabilities if you have all travelers in place. There's no real incentive to hold the hospital accountable for institutional failures.

Can you explain what travelers are for the audience people who may not know? Oh yeah, absolutely. So travel nurses come across the entire nation and they are contracted through travel companies that work with hospitals. So if there's a nursing shortage, there will be open positions to apply for those contract positions that are like short term. So either like a four week, six week, or if it's like a strike contract, it'd be like three days,

seven days, whatever it might be. And they're paid handsomely i know for our three day strike those travel nurses those strike nurses specifically for three days made 10k each jesus for three days and they didn't even know the facility some of them never even worked in a hospital so i don't i don't understand the requirements um it's confusing how yeah and i'm not trying to demonize travel nurses in any sort of way there's amazing travel nurses i've worked with some they're great people but they're um it just undermines um like our profession like it's it's hard toines our profession. It's hard to improve our profession when you have people that can replace you. There's no real change we can make.

It's just we're fighting each other. And travel nurses are independent contractors? Yeah, exactly. So the hospital doesn't pay them benefits. They don't take vacation. They don't call in sick. They save the employer a lot of money because they don't have to like provide any hospital resources such as like employee health or workers compensation or anything like that. Yeah.

And they just have that six week contract that they focus on and they, they're definitely paid their worth. There's less liability on the hospital too. If there's any medical errors, it's easier to like blame the travel nurse instead of blaming like institutional failures. Travel nurses, they just,

they can't unionize. There's just not a way. There's not like a common area for them to come together and yeah, create a union. So that's the hospitals like that. Yeah. Also, when you have more travel nurses at a hospital, that's less funding that can go to our union. We pay union dues every month. If hospitals are hiring more travel nurses, our union gets less funding, less power, sadly.

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Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So, all right, I guess moving on from that. Well, OK, I guess I guess before we fully move on to talking about how the strike was sort of organized. Okay, I guess before we fully move on to talking about how the strike was sort of organized, can we talk a little bit more about what staffing shortages looks like and what the effect that has on patients is? Because I think people, like, I think people, this is something people, like, kind of conceptually understand, but don't, like, viscerally get what it means to have a staffing shortage in a hospital. get what it means to have a staffing shortage in a hospital? So with inadequate nursing staffing levels by experienced nurses, there's an increased rate of patient falls, infections, medical errors, increase in deaths, increase in pressure ulcers, increase in readmission rates.

So having to go back to the hospital because you weren't given like high quality care at the hospital is just kind of mediocre if nurses are kind of strapped with time and have to divide their attention between too many patients so i don't know if you actually are legally allowed to say this but like how many patients like per day roughly are like you are like you uh treating patients are we treating the day um Our hospital at Methodist has about 400 beds and we've been at capacity. So above a hundred percent, and you're probably wondering, well, how do you get above a hundred percent? The ER will board patients, meaning a patient will stay on a cart and they'll be in a hallway and the hallways will be lined up with patients that are just waiting for other patients and other units to be discharged so they can take that bed. Um, so they can wait in the ER for up to two to three days just waiting to be like really admitted

um so we've been at capacity for a long time and that is that is purposely done to maximize profit just because of they've been consolidating closing other hospitals um and other neighborhoods like they're like they're charging all those people who are just they've been consolidating, closing other hospitals, um, and other neighborhoods. Like they're, like they're, they're charging all those people who are just like laying there in a hallway. Right. Absolutely. Or even, um,

if people come in for surgery and they have to, after surgery, they go to recovery, they can sit in recovery for up to eight hours, which normally after surgery, you only need to be there like a half hour to an hour, kind of depending on how you wake up from anesthesia. And then you go to your room, but we are just holding them in recovery because we're waiting on beds and rooms to be available because the hospital does not plan in advance at all. That's not cost effective. Yeah. Why? not planned in advance at all. That's not cost effective. Yeah, well, I mean, it's funny because it's like, it really seems, it's one of those things where it's like, literally this entire

process would be enormously less expensive if you hired like four more people and didn't close every hospital around you, but like, you know, it's not about efficiency, it's about like making sure you have as many dying people like sitting in a hallway so you can charge them more it's like oh exactly sick people are profitable not healthy people yeah

yeah i mean it's really it it's like there is just something like sort of particularly venal and disgusting about here it's like you you know, it's all of the same, like, okay, well, we've built up a monopoly and we're using a monopoly to force everyone to use our services. And then we're, you know, we're using contract workers to replace the people who normally do the jobs. But it's like, well, it's with health care. And it's like, instead of just like every TV show being awful, it's here's a bunch of people who are getting sick and dying because we just don't have enough nurses. Exactly. bunch of people who are getting sick and dying because we just don't have enough nurses exactly and then the only thing the hospitals do um is um they have all the managers go around and tell nurses okay today we gotta flex up they'll use terminology like that that sounds like empowering

and like strong man we gotta flex up today meaning we want you to take more patients than you like safely can um meaning like if you're if you work on a medical surgical unit it's usually like four to five patients is what's recommended for one nurse to have for 12 hours they'll ask you to take six or seven jesus and they'll call it flexing up and they're like well yeah but bob over there is flexing up why aren't you flexing up. And they're like, well, yeah, but Bob over there is flexing up. Why aren't you flexing up? And it's that type of corporate speak and empowerment language that forces us to risk our license. Yeah. And I think one of the consequences of this that, I mean, it's really obvious if you've been following sector at all is that okay well it turns out if you if you work a bunch of people like basically to death and you don't give them enough

resources you're making them take too many patients uh it's that people just start quitting exactly and yeah can you talk a bit about sort of the shortage that's been happening because of that too because that's i think a really bleak like just in the long term too it's just yeah i don't know like if you want to have an even vaguely functioning society the fact that you can't keep people as nurses yeah really bad absolutely yeah um pandemic hit and um nurses realize that they're just they're not being paid their worth. There's travel jobs that you can make 200 grand a year, 300 grand a year, just doing travel nursing. And then they're kind of sold on the idea that you own your schedule and you can just kind of plan around vacations and other times off you need.

And you just kind of book like a four week stint at a hospital. If you don't like it, you can just kind of plan around vacations and other times off you need. And you just kind of book like a four week stint at a hospital. If you don't like it, you can leave. So they kind of just sell our jobs back to us, but it's not good healthcare. Yeah. It's like, you know,

I've talked about this with like, like people who work at Starbucks, for example, or it's like, well, okay. Like if, if you're just constantly moving people around and nobody's like actually stays at a place and you never, you never build up a community of people who you're working with, like your cares, you know, it's like, okay, well, you're not going to get good stuff, but it's like, yeah, like this is like, like this is people's lives. Yeah, exactly. And those, um, travel, travel nurses, I mean, their goals are usually like financial freedom, like all of our goals.

And their goals are always short term. All I have to do is just deal with this hospital for four weeks and then I'm gone. Well, how is that going to fix any institutional errors or mean they they never will hold the employer accountable yeah and especially like it seems like like you know okay even even even if like everyone walk in like i don't i don't think you could have a functional hospital system if everyone was a travel nurse but like at some point it feels like there there's no way for there to be like there's no way for people to like keep leaving hospitals to go be travel nurses and also for travel nurses pay to stay that high? Yeah, exactly. Eventually it'll get saturated. And that's kind of the goal of hospitals is to push all of their permanent employees into traveling. So once that industry becomes saturated, then you can decrease wages and we'd have to compete amongst each other for certain jobs with

certain hours that we need or whatever. We'll just be, it's just a race to the bottom. We're just going to, yeah. Then the employer will control the market and it's, yeah. and i can't imagine 20 years from now um trying to be a travel nurse it's just going to be hard to compete with those younger people that are that could work harder and faster and longer than me for less money it's not sustainable for a career yeah and it's it just doesn't seem like a good way to do healthcare. Yeah, that also, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, so I guess the next thing I want to talk about in terms of, okay, so how do we make this better is about, yeah, this is a very large multi-hospital strike across multiple cities, which is a really impressive thing to pull off. I was wondering if you could talk about how that happened. Yeah. The pandemic really pushed a lot of nurses to want to fight for change.

And I think that it all started there. We all started coming together with the same issues and problems and finally just started organizing more um all these hospitals were currently unionized but um some were more like involved in their union than others yeah um i'd say now a lot of nurses are more involved in the union and it's a lot of younger nurses too um just because they're people are finally realizing that we are the union it's not a separate entity from us it's something that we can control and be a part of and be able to use it to balance power um so it just, yeah, it's our only way to fight, um, this healthcare sector. You very rarely get fast contracts when you're dealing with bosses, but yeah, like the,

the, the contract negotiation process seems to have been really bad even by sort of like regular contract negotiation standards. Yeah, for sure. I, I mean the, our negotiations,

we probably have negotiations like once a week, once every other week. Um, and the hospital shows up with five of their like elites that just hide behind a corporate lawyer who is just a union busting lawyer. And all they do is just gaslight and demonize us and say, well, the hospital staffing shortage is your fault because you guys are calling in sick too much. Or I mean, they just turn everything around to blame the nurses it's very demoralizing it's um we feel very just underappreciated especially with everything we've gone through with the pandemic and they've just been dismissive of what we're um what our needs are and especially like like the the like the calling in sick too much it's

like well yeah okay maybe your nurses wouldn't be getting sick if you weren't making them work with no people without adequate ppe in a pandemic like jesus christ oh it's just it's just comical the arguments that they have i know and like we don't we can't ever get vacation that we're asking for. I mean, one of our proposals is just to get a two-week block vacation for every nurse in the hospital, guaranteed, every year. Because we don't even get that. We have a cap on our vacation hours, and then we get denied our vacation constantly. People call in sick because we need a day off.

We need a break. we're burnt out like yeah yeah like okay like if you have vacation hours but you can't use them you don't actually have them like it's not that's not how this works exactly yeah it's it's a benefit they control yeah um what what are the things that i've been reading about that y'all been fighting for that it's really interesting to me because it's something i've seen in a few other struggles kind of proposed but never like really like put in the center of the thing is talking about like, like giving, giving, giving workers a role in staffing decisions.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Can you talk about that? Because that's really interesting to me. Yeah, absolutely. So,

I mean, currently we don't own our profession. We have no say in staffing ratios. The hospitals decide what is safe care and they're doing it absolutely wrong. Yeah. So we want to be able to take that back and control that and to say, this is what we need because our patients are sicker. They're staying longer in the hospital.

And in order to provide safer care, we need this many nurses for this many patients. So would that be on like a sort of like, okay, you have a negotiation. You said this is just like like the the like this is just the ratio or is this like a data is this an individual day-to-day thing um yeah i'm wondering how this would work yeah um right now let's see i know we are asking for like a committee that's made up of i mean administrative staff but also, but we want the nurses to be able to have the power to implement policies and change if they think it needs to be done. Yeah. Yeah. like a grid review. I think it's yearly is what we're asking for, but can be up to quarterly if need be, kind of just depending on what we're hearing from other employees on other units.

So I think it's kind of like on a week-to-week evaluation to see what's working and what's not. I know the hospital's argument for that is it would take nurses away from the bedside. But in reality... That doesn't make any sense. In reality, it would retain staff. Yeah. And also, okay, it's like, oh no we've we've taken a nurse away from the bedside for one hour to go to a committee meeting where they say we we could put more nurses

in like what exactly and like we want this committee like made outside of um like that like those nurses scheduled and then we also want them to be paid for their time. Yeah. Hospital disagrees with all of that. They don't even want to pay nurses for their time to create safe staffing ratios. Yeah. It's hard.

So like the people that are in power, they're just a bunch of narcissists. Yeah. That's all they are. And that's the only way to remain in power is to just a bunch of narcissists yeah that's all they are um and that's the only way to remain in power is to have no empathy for your employees so that is what we're up against so every negotiation i feel like i'm just arguing with a two-year-old yeah i mean it really like it they they really seem like a kind of people who you can

only actually like the only language they understand is power a kind of people who you can only actually the only language they understand is power and like the only way you can convince them of anything is just like whacking them over the head with it which David Graeber had this thing about

was it him I think he had this thing about how like the trying to think of how he actually phrased it it was basically like okay if if you have a lot of like if you have it in like a large amount of actual physical power over someone you don't need to like use eloquent arguments at all you can just sort of like tell them what to do and they have to do it and like the the less actual physical power you have the more you have to sort of like use argumentation to like convince people to do things and this this really seems like the peak of here are a bunch of people who have been so powerful for so long they they don't even

like they don't even know how to like make a compelling argument because they've never had to all all they all they've ever had to do is use brute force and it like sucks trying to use like logic and reason against people who like by design don't know and don't want to know how to do this because if if they if they're ever in a position where they have to it means that their power has been diminished. Exactly. Well, and also nurses, like we're natural people pleasers. We're like kind of a, we can be a little more submissive. And we've been like that for years and we're finally standing up for ourselves and they really don't have arguments. Yeah.

I mean, it's like, they're killing people. Like it's like they're killing people for money. There's not like, there's not actual moral justifications here exactly i know yeah it's just god what what a terrible way to run a health care system like just oh i know and um i know a lot of hospitals are getting more into like creating executive care and executive hospitals, executive clinics, and which all that is, is just a hospital that is just dedicated to exact,

like the elites. And you would pay that hospital, like a country club membership. So like 200 grand a year or whatever it's, they're not going to take Medicare. They're not going to take Medicaid. It'll be strictly out of pocket, not insurance, out of pocket money. And you can just get all of the care you need at that one facility. It'll have all specialties. You can see them same day. You can text your doctor. It's just care that's just on demand and readily available for

those people that can pay it i know i mean meanwhile everyone else is like waiting 17 hours with like a hole in them in a hallway exactly like uh fairview is one of the hospital chains in our um in minnesota and they're creating a thousand-bed hospital for the ultra elite. They're going to be doing that soon. And then they're also bargaining with the nurses and saying that they don't have money to pay them raises. They don't have money to give them family leave. They don't have money to create better staffing models. They don't have money to create better staffing models. You know, and one of the things I keep hearing about this is they're like, oh, like the rich hospitals will subsidize the ones that don't make money. It's like, no, they won't. Like, you're just going to keep all of that money and continue not funding the poorer hospitals. Like, you already do this.

You can't actually fool anyone who has spent more than two seconds looking at how this works. Exactly. I know. I know. two seconds like looking at this works exactly i know i know they're gonna prioritize those executive hospitals and just funnel all their money and resources that direction it'll for sure be non-union and they will push so much non-union propaganda at those facilities too yeah this sucks it does suck it does it does suck i know and just a lot of people don't know about it it's kind of scary what we're what we're heading towards and that's that's that's what we're fighting for or fighting against and i mean i will say like i i do feel like like a lot of the i don't know i've been thinking about this a lot with like

what happened in 2020 and like why that kind of thing happens and i think a lot of like okay there is an extent to which people sort of don't care about violence there's an extent to which people like are able to sort of like rationalize it but but i i think there is an extent to which like the average person on the street has no idea this is happening until they're like sitting in a hospital room and then they don't understand why it's happening and so i think yeah like i i i don't like this this is not an acceptable state of affairs and i think i don't know like the the the when people start to fight back and when people like actually know about what is happening i I think it's going to be like,

hopefully it will become harder and harder for them to do this stuff because you know, Hey, like, yeah, people are literally dying and being like previously injured because the hospital refuses to pay more. Exactly.

No, they just, um, the hospitals just push that propaganda that they're underfunded they can't afford staff they can't afford this and there's a nursing shortage and there's nothing they can do about it and it's actually there's not a nursing shortage at all there's a shortage of nurses that want to deal with this shit yeah they're just leaving the bedside for better jobs welcome i'm daniel won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows

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Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. I think the thing I wanted to sort of start closing on is about, like, okay, there is some negotiation going on about pay raises because, hey, guess what? Inflation is happening, et cetera, et cetera. But, like, the extent to which the negotiations aren't about, like, aren't about pay, because this is wrong

i i don't think the strike would have happened if it had just been people not getting paid enough like i i think if there was adequate staffing and i think if there was like if people weren't being forced to take more patients like there wouldn't be a strike right now or there wouldn't have been a strike yeah possibly yeah for sure i I think we're definitely not paid our worth, but also that's not all we want. There's definitely way more to it. Yeah, we just want to reclaim our profession. Yeah, it really seems like the stuff that's happening, and I had almost unlimited power, and they've used their almost unlimited power

to just make everyone's lives an absolute living hell. And they've used it to sort of like, just to force people to work hours that are unbelievable, to force people to like, you know, force people to stand there with like,

like cans so they can pee in too while they're still on an assembly line force people just like this like unbelievably just sort of horrible and degrading stuff that's like it's like no you can't actually just fix this with higher wages you actually have to change like so something actually has to change about how the workplace works because otherwise people are just going to stop. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know one of our proposals, we want to work a max of three 12-hour shifts in a row. Because right now our contract says we can't work more than seven 12-hour shifts in a row. And we obviously, that is way too much.

And that's something that we just... I mean, even three is like... of our shifts in a row and we obviously that is way too much and that's something that we even even three is like like isn't it really like every single time i read one of these things it's like okay like hey i like yeah okay we we we want for only one of our fingers to be cut off per shift instead of four and it's like this is like oh god it's like the demands are incredibly reasonable considering what you're being asked to do like jesus i don't know oh yeah we want the hospitals to have six months of ppe on hand at all times they've already declined that yeah i was like oh who who needs ppe like everywhere the supply chain is like oh who who needs to have uh who needs to have like uh stories

of critical spare parts no one this this will never come back to haunt us we will never be in a position where we suddenly don't have the spare parts we need oh my god yeah i know um we have a pandemic proposal we want um we want to pass and that's just to give the nurses the power to decide, um, what we need when another pandemic hits, um, to provide safe care and like safety for ourselves. Um, yeah,

the hospital didn't include us on any decisions during the pandemic. It was, yeah, we were just used and abused. Yeah. And, um, it was yeah we were just used and abused yeah and um we had to use our own sick time and vacation if we were exposed or if we had quarantines or were diagnosed with covid yeah which also i like i like i but mo did you get covid uh while this was happening um i've I've only had it once that I know of, yeah. I mean, okay, that's it. Only had it once. I don't

know anyone who worked as a nurse who didn't get COVID at least once, and most of them got it at least twice. God, I don't know. It's just so bleak. I know. And it just depended on like your patient population.

I'm in surgery. So I'm a little more like guarded from that COVID population. You know, we only did surgery if they really needed it done and if they were positive for COVID. So we kind of got to pick and choose a little bit. But other nurses, obviously they could not avoid COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't, it's just, God, like I can't just cut, like, just, this is just the worst possible way you can run a medical system and it's just i know i know and i know like i know and um let's see sanford is another big um hospital joint giant that's like in south dakota north dakota and i'm from south dakota so this kind of all like really hits home for me um is they're hiring 700 foreign nurses like from venezuela mexico wherever um as like they're pretty much using them as travel nurses um just to avoid actual travel nurses here um they will bring them here um by 2025 and they'll sign like a three-year contract um the hospital will provide housing for them and they will drop wages significantly

in the nursing world especially in south dakota and north dakota they are definitely not going to be paid their worth i know they're going to be exploited more than we are. I had family, like the aunt and uncle I was talking about who were doctors, like were in North Dakota for a bit. And they were just like, this is the worst. And they like,

they left for like, like they left for a vast improvement and being in a hospital in Nebraska, which is like, yeah. And I also like, I want to talk about this a little bit because this is like a this is the huge thing with the philippines too where like there's there's like

there are whole industries of like basically training people and then shipping them to the us so they can be like just horribly exploited um and that's been like one of the things that's been like i don't know like bolstering the profits of the medical sector for a long time is the ability to just like import people and exploit them yeah and like the fact that they're like oh god this is some like the the the the the the fact that these people are going to be like living in like houses that are owned by their bosses is some real like yeah gilded age shit yeah i mean well i mean the thing the thing that most like this is this is like standard practice in china for example and

it's a disaster like i like i i don't know i don't know if people have ever like actually seen pictures of what the inside of these dormitories look like but like it is like these are you you get a room that is like smaller than a college dorm room that doesn't have air conditioning. I don't know. We talked about it on this show. We talked about a worker a couple of weeks ago who died during the heat wave. Because when he came home, he'd been working a bunch of shifts. He had to work a shift in 104 degrees, like loading stuff onto a train and he came back home

and there was no air conditioning and he's in this tiny apartment he died in his bed because you know it was too hot and like like this is the kind of stuff that happens especially when you have like like when when you're sleeping in corporate dormitories and we're sleeping in a place that like your boss owns like this is the shit that happens and it's really really bleak and i i hope these people are able to unionize and like fight their bosses but like yeah i don't know it yeah well i mean fear of being exiled i i highly doubt they're gonna be able to unionize yeah because yeah because i'm gonna say everything like like the way the visa process works, right? Like, it's really easy to like if someone's here on a work visa and then suddenly you're like, oh, hey, I want to unionize. It's like, well, no, screw you.

You don't have a job anymore. We're going to get you deported. And that's exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which I mean, I guess it's another one of those things where like all of the different

sort of disparate fights people are having are connected. This wouldn't be happening if we didn't have the sort of border regime that we have right now. If immigration system wasn't just like, you know, and it just

if it wasn't just like you know and like and it just like if it wasn't just like a giant like torture machine for millions of people the stuff wouldn't be happening if we weren't in this sort of moments of like you know if we weren't in a moment where the power of unions has been collapsing for decades like if we weren't in if we weren't in a place where like i mean even even even sort of like on on on the level of obama going like we're not gonna like we're gonna make our healthcare system worse because it will cost insurance jobs if you make it any better like it's just like oh yeah i feel like i feel like i feel like the medical sector is like like people do working in healthcare is like it feel like the medical sector is like like people do working

in health care is like it's one of these places where just like every possible it's kind of it's kind of like prisons where it's like like everything that's gone wrong in our society just like gets focused into like one nexus point and it's the point where people have to go where they die i know and the only thing that's holding hospitals accountable are unions in this country yeah if there was no unions the wages would be much lower and i don't even know where health care would be right now yeah i don't know like not good i mean like i i keep i keep going back to china because it's like that's like the other health care system that's a disaster that like i have family and it's like well i guess this is the thing that's been happening in the u.s too of like with the

increasing violence against staff but like china has a huge like a huge problem with basically riots breaking out because people like someone's family member dies. Because their care was really bad. And so they'll just be like a riot. And people will go attack the doctors. And it's like. I get why they're doing this. But it's like it sucks. And this is a huge problem they've had.

With retention. Because their numbers are like. Their staff to patient ratios. Are unreal. Awful. And yeah. because their numbers are like their their like their staff to patient ratios are unreal awful and yeah and like you know like that that kind of stuff makes healthcare systems fall apart absolutely yeah like and that's yeah and that's kind of like they've been doing that here i mean hospitals have been demonizing nurses instead of like actually saying that they do have institutional failures and it's their fault. And we're only as strong as like the safety protocols and policies that are in place.

Yeah. And like, I mean, like the best nurse in the world can't be three nurses. Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. exactly yeah yeah and um yeah so if they kind of do this foreign nursing deal um i mean south dakota north dakota they're right to work states so they it's almost impossible to unionize you can but it's it takes a lot of work uh yeah but when most of your staff is already travelers like i was told by um another nurse like in north dakota sanford their staff is 80 travelers well how the hell

can you even attempt to unionize and that's that's the goal of hospitals is just to create so much turnover where yeah well i mean it's just yeah it's just turning hospitals into amazon which the system notoriously works great like it's oh exactly and travelers um are less likely to speak up because they're just afraid of their contract being canceled yeah or they're going to be blacklisted and blacklisted just means like there's a common website that all hospitals will go on just to look at travel nurses that are recommended not to call or not to give a contract to. Jesus. Yeah, exactly. So, and you can blacklist a nurse for any reason.

Yeah. And the reasons are not disclosed. it just says do not call next to that name well that completely ruins their travel career yeah it's like it's amazing it's so formalized like i i know people have been blacklisted from other professions but it was like very like it was kind of an under the table thing this is just like not at not we're we were literally going to put your name on a, on like a list that everyone just has like, Oh God. Yeah, exactly.

I know. So if there is, you know, safety issues at a hospital, those nurses are less likely to speak up and they're less likely to even, you know, leave their contract because they're afraid of retaliation like that it just incentivizes just terrible care yeah okay we we have now spent an enormous amount of time talking about how unbelievably messed up this

whole system is um what can people do to a help this strike and be like well help with contract negotiations and be like just in general try to like fight for better health care for people i know i've been asked that a lot too um we do have a website with um mna minnesota nursing association where we do like to have people share their stories about surprise bills or firsthand experiences with understaffing, et cetera. And that's something like we've just been kind of collecting stories just so we can kind of keep exposing the corruption. just so we can kind of keep exposing the corruption. Also donating to our strike fund is always much appreciated. Yeah. Yeah. We'll put, we'll put a link to that in the description.

Yeah. That's how you create change. It's just public pressure. Yeah. Do you, do you have anywhere else, anything else that you want to say? I don't think so. I don't think think so i feel like i covered a lot cool um yeah i just wanted to bring awareness to this topic yeah thank you so much for bringing on the show and for talking to us about this because yeah this is definitely something that people need to hear and i'm really glad you're able to join us thank Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. This has been It Could Happen Here, a podcast by Cool Zone Media and I guess also iHeart. Yeah.

You can find us in the usual places. Yeah. Make the world a better place for nurses and a worse place for hospital executives. Yes. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. Yes. monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of rife. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of

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