NYC NOW - September 19, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

New York City significantly missed its target processing times for food and cash benefit applications last fiscal year, achieving only 30% for cash assistance and 40% for SNAP against a 90% goal. Also, starting March 1st 2024, every business in New York City must use garbage cans with lids. Meanwhile, Newark will use an $8-million U.S. Forest Service grant to combat heat islands and plant more trees, also supporting community-based workforce programs to boost the local economy. Finally, over 1700 nurses are striking at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey, and after over a month, the parties recently convened their first face-to-face bargaining meeting; Renee Bacany of the representing union provides an update.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, September 19th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. New York City is way behind its own goal to process food assistance and cash benefit applications on time. City limits workers, reports workers, process less than 30% of cash assistance and 40% of SNAP applications. last fiscal year, short of their goal of 90% for both.

Advocates blame staffing shortages and more. The city's under a federal court order to eliminate the backup of applications by next March. A policy that kicks in early next year aims to do away with some of the mountains of trash bags on city streets. Starting March 1st, every business in New York City must use garbage cans with lids. The new policy expands on a rule that went into effect this month, requiring all food-related and chained businesses to put their garbage in bins. Mayor Adams says the idea is to cut off food for rats and improve the city's public spaces. All of those black bags would be off our streets.

Our streets would look cleaner. They would smell cleaner. The Adams administration says businesses produce about 20 million pounds of trash every day, about half of the city's total trash output. The city plans to start issuing warnings a month before the policy. goes into effect. Newark will become greener with an $8 million U.S. Forest Service grant to plant more trees in the city. One goal is helping Newark mitigate damage from the climate crisis. Climate Central rates Newark has second worst in the nation for heat islands, that is urban areas, without enough shade.

Plenty of Sunday day. 70 and sunny now. Sunny and 74. Today, tomorrow, Thursday and even Friday before fall starts on Saturday. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. More than 1,700 nurses are on strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It's been more than a month, and the two sides just held their first face-to-face bargaining session since the strike began. We're joined now by Renee Bassani, Chief Shop Steward for Local 4200 of the United Steelworkers Union, which represents the nurses. Hey, Renee, welcome to WNYC.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Glad to be here. This strike is at the flagship hospital for our WJ Barnabas Health. Tell us what's at issue here. What we're asking for is safe staffing, for staffing ratios that make sense so that we can deliver better care to our patients. So the hospital has actually offered to meet demands for staffing levels and pay nurses more if they don't manage to do that. They sent us a statement saying that they've accepted the union's demands twice even before the strike. So what is holding up a deal?

What's holding up the deal is that they want to penalize nurses who are sick. So if a nurse calls out sick, then the staffing levels or the staffing ratios are pretty much off the table. So what they're saying is if I call out sick, the rest of my unit will suffer because I'm missing, but they have no reason to replace me because I've been out sick. And our feeling is if I'm sick, I should not be taking care of any patients that are immunocompromised or coming to the hospital for care. They certainly shouldn't be serviced by someone who's not feeling well. So one of the stories that we've been hearing about for a couple of years now is nursing shortages all over the country. So what's going on at the hospital in New Brunswick and how are they managing to take care of patients while there's a strike going on? Right now they have strike nurses in.

I do believe that they have moved over to a traveling nurse agency that is staffing the hospital. But the staffing levels that they have inside the hospital are better than what we're asking for, if you can imagine that. Yeah, the hospital has said they've spent $50 million on strike-breaking visiting nurses. I believe that to be about true, yes. Why do you think it is more important for them to spend all of that money rather than give you the extra staffing levels? Not to put any nurses down. I do believe that our acuity is very high inside that hospital, and I do understand that they would have to spend a little bit more money,

maybe to have a little bit better ratios while we are out. The nurses that I work alongside are very good in their specialties, and I am very proud to stand aside from them. If we zoom out from this situation, what's the larger context? Because there's been nursing strikes all over the place, Michigan, Rochester, Milwaukee, California. So what is going on in the healthcare industry that's prompting so many of these strikes? I believe that the patients are living longer, thanks to technology and to improvements in health care.

So patients are living longer, and those that are coming into the hospital, they're, I think, a little bit sicker than they were in the past. The acuity is very high, and, you know, we need more nurses to care for these patients. We need more tech help also to care for the patient. Then also, I think that the profession, we're just, you know, on a national average, we're missing quite a bit. We have a huge, huge vacancy. And I think that we don't have enough teachers to teach in the colleges to bring in more nurses. The combination of the two together, the sicker patient, and not enough staff has, I think, been a detriment.

I think that we would see an improvement in mortality, an improvement in infection should we have more staff at the bedside. Do you see an end in sight here, both to the strike at your hospital, but also the larger issues that you're just talking about? I think that we need to do whatever we can to bring more nurses into the field. and I think that if we do better with ratios and we do better with the care at the bedside, not only will it help the patients and the community, but I think it would attract more to that profession. Renee Bassani is the chief shop steward at Local 4200 of the United Steelworkers Union, which represents the 1700 nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

Renee, thanks so much for joining us. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me any time. We reached out to our WJ leadership for a reply. They told us the negotiating schedule has been dictated by the federal mediator and that the hospital has offered a settlement that hasn't been put before the union membership for a vote. Our WJ also says staffing levels are already among the highest in this state. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.