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You are not owed someone else’s labor.

If they hired enough nurses it wouldn’t be an issue.

Pay nurses and adequate staffing seems like a solution.

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Not really. Everyone was aware a walk out was going to happen. The hospital failed to take the necessary action.

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The nurses gave notice ahead of time and the execs knew way in advance and understood the consequences. This is absolutely not on them.

You CAN’T blame the nurses for this! This is Mount Sinai’s fault 100 percent! This is the hospital’s fault all the way!!!!

not on the nurses. No one agrees with you, hence the downvotes.

The hospital was notified of the strike happening way before it did. It was up to administration to staff up the units appropriately with qualified nurses who could take care of critically ill neonates. Why would the nurses who are on strike be guilty of anything other than wanting reasonable patient ratios and pay? It’s a tragedy that an infant died, but this just highlights the fact that you need qualified staff at the bedside. The strike could have been avoided if management and the union came up with a fair contract before the time came for a strike. The fact that management walked away from the bargaining table multiple times during negotiations led to a strike.

The press should absolutely cover that the hospital...which was already understaffing...which is why people went on strike...went ahead and continued to understaff during this crisis which may have led to the death of a child. Meaning the nurses were absolutely correct to strike and everything they said was 100% right.

These hospitals couldn't even be bothered to pretend to create safe staffing ratios when staff went on strike because of unsafe staffing ratios. You can have an amazing staff of high quality nurses, but if you have only 1 of them to 20 patients, people will needlessly die.

There's no evidence the baby died as a result of the strike. And even if it did it's on the hospital for not paying the nurses properly and hiring enough.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Nurses went on strike because they recognized they had unsafe staffing ratios. Meaning there was one nurse for 20 patients in some cases. If the hospital chose to continue to understaff during the strike, they are fully liable for anything that happened. Not only that, they proved the nurses were right in the first place. People die when there aren't enough nurses to tend to them.

Do you not know that nurses were brought in and paid high wages while the rest were on strike? Hospitals weren't left empty. Read a minute of information about what you're talking about before you comment I beg you.

>These people, all of them, killed a baby.

A hospital that understaffed their hospital may have led to the death of a child. There's one entity at fault here.

Nurses aren't slaves. They aren't saints either. They aren't required to stick around in unsafe situations and give their labor out of the goodness of their hearts. I know we all expect this of women especially and women dominated fields, but it's bullshit. These nurses went on strike because the hospital refused to have safe staffing ratios. The nurses were yelling outside the building that patients are in danger because of the ratios. If anyone died because of that it's because of the hospital administrators. Period.

Mt Sinai is a dump

You are wrong. Firemen and police cant strike, so they’re slaves?

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Not true

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Wow, great rebuttal. You are flatly wrong. A quick Google about what the nurses union listed as their main concern for the strike would answer the question for you.

You have no idea what you're talking about, but you say it very boldly so I'll give you that.

Why did the hospital hire nurses who don't know how to work in a hospital setting? Travel nurses are brought into hospitals all the time. If they don't know what they're doing, because the administration is hiring inadequate nurses or not bothering to train them. They knew the strike was happening and they had tons of forewarning. There's no excuse.

These nurses aren't in public hospitals. The Taylor Laws don't apply to them.

You are wrong. But do go on.

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You are very wrong.

Hospitals should be covered the same. Their greed caused this.

You got it! The hospital would be at fault for unsafe staffing ratios. Not the nurses who went on strike warning everyone about their unsafe staffing ratios.

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The article literally says that it was unstaffed and the baby was sick but no one experienced was around to escalate

Damn those greedy money grubbing nurses asking for frivolous things like adequate staffing. I can't tell if you're a corporate brownnoser or you just don't understand what the strike was about.

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You have the logical process of a 4 year old, scary to see

The strike was about money and power, nothing else.

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Fixed headline:

Mount Sinai management is investigating ways to smear organized labor.

There is no way you aren’t trolling lol

The last time I was admitted to the ER in nyc, the nurses were not doing their jobs. They left me alone behind a curtain with a rapist in custody unattended uncuffed and they forgot to feed me for 7 hours. I asked for food and was told there was none, I asked to leave to get food or order delivery and they said if I left I would be recharged again coming back. My mother is a 3 decade long hospital worker, (in the south, so my views on nurses are multi regional) the nurses unions and nurses sociological environment is very toxic. I shadowed my mother a few times growing up and I always assumed the doctors are the biggest AH in the hospitals, but the hierarchy system nurses establish amongst themselves is one of the most unhealthy work dynamics I’ve seen in my life. Like any other occupations you have good ones and bad ones, but our overall health system breeds and festers problems in EVERY corner of it.

No it isn’t, because there isn’t greed on both sides, you’re just a dummy

And how do you know that even with staff there the baby wouldn't have died? It's not like nurses can monitor every single baby every second.

Im literally quoting the article. There was no one around for a while to escalate the baby's condition. It should've been but it was not because no one was present. Did you read the article?

That's on management to ... manage.

Imagine looking forward to the birth of your child for almost a year, only for them to die during a nurse’s strike at the hospital they were born in. Something that was completely avoidable is now a tragedy.

I mean with what staff?

They did not kill a baby.

If the hospital wanted staffing, they should have paid someone to do it.

It's pretty obvious you have no idea what the strike was about, which isn't really excusable considering both sides acknowledged what the main sticking points were. I have no idea what you get out of being so aggressively ignorant.

“Ok we need 7 nurses tmrw”

“Uhhh they’re all outside holding signs”

Ok I’m going to say this. I have an 8 week old who spent 12 total days in the NICU. Originally mt sinai west (58th and 10th) 11 nights there and 1 night at Sinai East. To gain access to the NICU at Sinai west, you needed to go to a wash station, wash with soap and water, then use medical grade sanitizer, then you can be buzzed in. My son had his own little half of an open room maybe 90 sq ft. Our own large comfy chair plus a visitor seat, a curtain that can close off so my wife can pump or feed or if we need privacy. Only one other baby across from him with their own 90 sq ft and same set up. Very quiet, staff was great. Very clean and you feel safe knowing your baby is in good hands.

My son needed to be transferred to Sinai east since it is a Children’s hospital and the specialist was located there….. never again will I go to this hospital. This was 2 weeks before the strike.

You walk in, it’s not clean. No hand washing station. My son was in a 50sq ft open space next to 3 other babies. And there is another 4 babies on the other side of the room. So 8 babies in a 100 sq ft space compared to 2 in a 180sq ft space. There is only one chair which is not comfortable and no privacy so hard to feed and/or pump. Nurses are much louder and overwhelmed. I looked at my wife and said my child is not staying here longer than 1 night I don’t care I will fight to get him transferred to another hospital.

I can’t say enough good things about my experience in the NICU at mount sinai west and how horrible it was on the east side. Over crowded and dirty. For the sickest of babies they do have isolation rooms which are in good condition but for the 90% of babies there, it’s a nightmare.

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It's like the police investigating themselves, but in this case the reasons are laid out on the table. People, ALL people, need to be put up, NOT corporations. We're living in poverty, from coast to coast.

Traveling nurses have experience. If Mt. Sinai didn't bother to bring on contract nurses who know what they're doing, that's 100% on the hospital.

The hospitals aren't empty of staff during strikes. Hospitals bring on traveling nurses (and pay them handsomely).

>the nurses were not doing their jobs.

How many nurses were there taking care of how many patients? You've a very warped perspective of what was happening here. It's not one-on-one nurse to patient. And in many of these hospitals it's one nurse for 20 patients. And especially in an ER, with some of the worst ratios, you will be left alone if you aren't a high priority for your ailment. Blame that on the hospital.

My mom was a nurse too and I can't imagine being as entitled as you are knowing what goes on behind the scenes. They are doing what they can with limited resources and staff-power available to them. We shouldn't be taking that out on nurses, we should be angry with the hospital admin who make millions annually in salary and allow ERs to be this way.

Do you think that hospitals have no nurses when there are strikes? Based on some of the comments I've been seeing here, I think many people believe that.

The hospital routinely hires travel nurses and did so for this. Looks like they understaff their nurses who they contracted for the strike the exact same way they understaff their full time nurses. Looks like the nurses were 100% right and justified in their strike.

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Apparently they didn’t get any good ones for some reason

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. It seems like even mentioning the fact that theyre short staffed is perceived at criticism towards the nurses on this sub.

The fact of the matter is that striking is meant to disrupt the normal operations flow. It did, and a baby died from it. I'm sorry, but it's absurd to say "well, management should have hired nurses then!". Staffing issues aren't that simple. Yes, the strike was likely the cause of this babies death, but that doesn't mean it's the nurses fault. It's their right to strike, and in an industry like Healthcare, it should be very clear that it likely results in unnecessary deaths.

Then it was on management in the weeks leading up to the strike to ensure their most vulnerable patients were sent to properly staffed facilities and not accept additional ones. The disruption to normal flow of operations should have been Mount Sinai caring for fewer patients and receiving less in fees, not having patients die.

Administrators administrate. Bring in traveling nurses, reroute patients if you have to, shut down or reduce services. It’s painful and it sucks but that’s why they get paid the big bucks. They should be responsible and accountable for their staffing decisions.

These people can’t have their cake and eat it too.

From a philosophical standpoint point, I’m really wondering who bears responsibility.

Mount Sinai management may have been responsible for why nurses went on strike to begin with, but the nurses who would’ve been stationed to newborn care and arguably could’ve prevented the death ultimately had a choice - go to work or don’t to fight for a cause.

On the one hand, management may have caused the reason why nurses weren’t available to look after patients. On the other it was the nurse’s absence that lead to death.

Like the entire maternity ward? If you try hard enough, you can blame anything on management, since theyre...you know...managing.

I cannot "philosophically" come to any conclusion that places blame on a person who refuses to work under unfair labor conditions while the people denying fair labor conditions have a vast amount of wealth they sit on.

If a baby died while the nurses weren't on strike, but overworked and overwhelmed to the point that this baby couldn't receive proper care, the hospital would be throwing the nurses under the bus. When they go on strike, the hospital will still throw the nurses under the bus for not being there.
There is no circumstance where the hospital will want to take responsibility.

It’s simple. They were told in advance of the strike. They should have hired fly ins to cover during the strike

Damn, you telling me management only got 24 hours notice about the strike?

E: added "got".

Nurses went on strike because they did not have the capacity to care for the amount of patients they are responsible for. It sounds like you saw exactly that issue. It's not the nurses' fault, it's the hospital.

I mean it seems extreme but so is the death of an infant. Yes, management absolutely needed to make arrangements so their vulnerable patients were cared for in the event of a known strike date. Maybe they could have kept a small amount of the maternity ward with their limited staff. This isn't a reach, this is managements responsibilities. Tough place to be but that was it.

Management knew months in advance about a strike. They didn't prepare a good enough contingency plan. I don't see how that's on the workers. Thats the whole point of Management. Nurses don't manage.

From a philosophical standpoint point, you just wrote some spectacularly dimwitted both-sides-ism.

Good argument but in a more extreme example, will it still be the case? What if all American citizens cease to pay taxes because of unfair living conditions and quality of life. And I’m so doing all city-paid workers don’t get paid and they all stop doing their jobs (teachers stop showing up to school and kids are left without education, sanitation stops taking trash and we have increase rodents and pests prescience and health risks, cops stop doing whatever cops do and criminals take advantage of the situation to wreak havoc, list goes on and on.

Considering you are now a victim since your kids don’t get education, there’s trash outside your house for weeks, and you have to board up your windows from opportunistic criminals, Will you still blame the government for pushing people to go this far, or will you blame everyone who played a part?

i feel like it’s always easy to blame the big leader if we’re not the victims (ie not it wasn’t our kid who died because of this whole strike debacle)

I don't think you read what I wrote, and you repeated what was said before. The argument you're making essentially says that there is an unlimited amount of nurses ready to work, and the hospital has the budget to hire at a premium. I'm assuming the follow up argument will be that the hospital should stop paying administration so much, but that isn't what we are talking about.

Should there be fundamental changes in the pay structure in these hospitals? Probably. Is that relevant? No. Management doesn't just manage its staff, it manages its budget and is working with its limited funds to find replacement staffing. They don't have the power to just pay temporary staff whatever they want. If it goes over budget, that's an issue that is blamed on management. What exactly are they supposed to do if they are unable to staff departments with the budget they have allocated for them. And no, the answer isn't "change the budget." That falls on the board who set the relatively inflexible budget for the year.

It is a tough place to be in. I agree. I just don't know if the maternity ward is the top priority in terms of vulnerable patients. Had the cancer center been understaffed and someone died, people blaming management would say they should have reallocated staff there, then the maternity ward would be understaffed. I'm having trouble understanding why the concept of limited resources is so difficult to grasp for people in this thread.

That’s a straw man argument if I’ve ever heard one. You’re placing all the blame externally and none internally, even in your own examples. It’s always the workers fault, and the consumer is innocent in your examples.

If my kids can’t go to school, then my RESPONSIBILITY is to teach them myself. If sanitation isn’t taking out the trash, my RESPONSIBILITY is to clean and figure out a solution so my kids aren’t living in filth.

Similarly, in this very real situation, nurses took responsibility for their own lives. They were put in unsafe working conditions, without sufficient compensation, so they walked out. It is the hospital administration’s responsibility to either get nurses back into the building or to send critical patients to a hospital where they can receive necessary care

I feel it to be a justifiable question though I understand it’s a controversial one. To attack the thought of saying the underdog side is responsible without even justifying without offense is dancing around the point. We can’t just accept truth for what it is without explaining why.

It seems that your thought process is “people who are tasked to sustain and maintain public health/safety are not to blame if they decide to stop working due to unfair working and compensation conditions.” If we cut cops’ salaries and a significant number of them quit resulting shortage in staff or they all go on strike, and opportunistic criminals take advantage do whatever they want, do we still blame whoever is in charge of allocating budget for the cops salary instead of the actual individuals who quit?

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Very fair points. Now if you remove spectator bias and assume the position of the father/mother of the baby who died, can you honestly say you hold zero remorse against the nurses who would’ve been stationed to care for you and your kid had there not been a strike/unfair working conditions?

What a bullshit title. Fuck MS, support the unions.

You’re using emotion to justify who’s right.That’s not how the world or our legal system works. I have two fat cats who feel very strongly resentful about the fact that they’ve been restricted from treats on the vet’s advice- by your logic that makes me a monster.

Of course a family is going to be distressed that their baby died. Of course they’re going to lash out in anger emotionally. That doesn’t make it right.

I’m going to give you a personal example. I grew up in a very cold, very snowy place. Local teenagers liked to race each other on snowmobiles in the ditches alongside the road. 5 kids on 2 snowmobiles were racing each other when they decided to cross in front of a semi. Icy road+a very heavy truck meant that the driver could not stop in time. All 5 kids died. The families blamed the driver, despite the fact that literally nothing he could have done could have changed the circumstances. The blame and hate he received plus his own guilt resulted in him taking his own life a few years later. Those families were not right in what they did, but they couldn’t accept their own responsibility in their children’s death(namely letting 5 kids under 16 use snowmobiles unsupervised alongside a highway to race)

I also suspect that you don’t actually know what spectator bias is

Then they would need to relieve both wards. I don't understand why the concept of responsible management for people literally in charge of life and death is so hard to understand.

I didnt say there'd be unlimited budget or nurses. There are Other avenues like limiting or shutting down services.

If some McD workers quit but the manager says business as usual, and you got hungry angry customers, you gonna look to the Manager to fix or the ex-workers to fix?

You can give management all the slack you want, but no way are workers to blame. Even then, Management proposes the budget, in charge of swaying the board, lining up financing, figuring out budget, etc. They knew months in advance. Dont forget in most of the time, Management is close with the board; its not as adversarial /grilling the CEO as its supposed to be in an ideal governance scenario.

It literally comes down to who is in charge of making decisions and who made what decisions - and did those decisions work out for them (Management, Management, and no). Then Management fixes it.

Seriously. Do you read my comments, or do you just wait for a response so you can say the same thing again?

^ this

Are you saying what would happen if a majority of Americans participated in a general strike? If they did then maybe the labor force would gain some power to improve our lives. You know, as long as the cops don't start beating the shit out of people who are striking, which is what they historically have done.

I do not give a fuck about your weird hypotheticals. I care about the real world.

But we see this happen all the time with cyclist in NYC - cyclists turn a corner when they don’t have the light or right of way, get hit with a semi, they die and we blame the city for not giving safe and protected bike lanes when the cyclist could have saved their own life had they waited their turn

On the one hand the cyclist would’ve indeed been safe if he had his own barricaded lane. On the other hand we share the road with bikes trucks cars you name it.

I can wholeheartedly say that I would not hold striking nurses accountable if my own child died because they were literally striking to create SAFER conditions for children. They were striking BECAUSE it was dangerous to put few staff in charge of many patients. I am on the side of nurses precisely because I know they care about their patients and the hospital does not.

I read your comments just fine. I disagree with your conclusions for the reasons stated. You haven't exactly added much to the discussion your last 3 posts.

So if you quit your job, give two weeks notice, and then something bad happens weeks after you quit, you think you should be held criminally liable?

Sounds like you're unwilling to entertain the idea that this issue might be more complex than "management bad and greedy." I provided several reasons why this goes beyond management not having the foresight to hire temporary nurses in anticipation for the strike. You just chose to immediately downvote and disregard what I said. If someone provides an argument against your points and all you can say is I'm wrong, you clearly aren't very confident in what you're saying.

You’re actually wrong. But keep going

All administrators act like they get paid 6 figures to spin in their chair. NOPE, they are paid to deal with administrative issues like staffing during a strike. They had ample time, they just didn't do their job (shocker).

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I didn't blame the workers. Them not being there likely contributed to the death of the newborn, but they are striking and that's completely not their fault. You're making sweeping generalizations about what a management team is given the power to do and oversimplifying the process of reallocation of staff and funds. Especially when we're talking about highly specialized departments

>From a philosophical standpoint point, I’m really wondering who bears responsibility.

The Hospital Administration who didn't properly staff the hospital.

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I provided several solutions to the problems you posited. You are the one who comes off extremely inflexible and unwilling to consider other viewpoints in this discussion. I didn’t even downvote you, are you aware there’s more than 1 other user on Reddit? I get that being downvoted can sometimes feel unpleasant and put you on the defensive but these last two posts of yours are just a really bad look, not going to sugar coat it.

No because I quit and am no longer responsible for what happens the second I walk out the door on my last day. But assuming I didn’t come in one day because I practiced my right to strike or I just wasn’t feeling it cause I was hungover, and for whatever reason my company couldn’t find a replacement, I would have a sense of guilt and to a certain extent feel responsible for bad things that happened which I would’ve been able to prevent had I been there.

Ie If I’m a security guard in the Louvre and we all didn’t show up to work on Monday for whatever reason and a bunch of thieves decide to steal the Mona Lisa on that day, then I’d feel directly responsible for why that very famous art work is lost and will probably be sitting in the house if whatever shady billionaire buys it from the dark web

If it came down to it, would you volunteer to have your child die a martyr and as a symbol for fair wages/better working conditions for nurses? If it was your child’s life on the line would you also be accepting of the unintended consequence all for the betterment of future kids/lives of those who will care for future patients?

They lose a maternity ward - they hire specialized nurses. You mean a group of MDs in Management can't figure out who to hire? Get adequately staffed or reduce service. Can't have it both ways.

What is missing from Management's toolset? Spell it out for me. You make it sound like the CEO or anyone below him don't have the power to make tough calls, like reduce service to reflect inadequate staffing, or raise financing, or just overall powerless to watch this unfold. Will all avenues perfectly work out? No, then Management balances all the info. It was predictable there'd be gaps, so how did Management address the immediate issues?

At the end of the day, nurses were striking over inadequate staffing ratios (i.e., too many patients vs nurses), among other things, that Management was unwilling to fix. So it seems like someone/several people in Management need to wake up.

Saying inadequate workers to contributed to the death is literally the tip of the iceberg and not reflective of the root cause(s). Go down a couple levels of why and those are your root causes. And Management's task is to figure out how to solve that. Not the workers, not the board, Management's.

It’s an unethical, community destroying, staff disrespecting, money pocketing dump.

Dude you are to blame for not studying hard, becoming a nurse and preventing this baby’s death. Philosophically

management had 10 days notice for the strike. as well as months notice that the contract expired at the end of the year and if they didn’t come to an agreement with the union/nurses, a strike was a possibility.

so if you gave two weeks notice and your boss didn’t replace you; and then something bad happened after you left, are you still liable? no and neither are the nurses.

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Hmmm…

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How about if you scheduled vacation & something happened while you were away?

Nobody is obligated to work any job, that is slavery. Philosophical debate over.

Go troll somewhere else

Nobody is volunteering their child for martyrdom. I am capable of understanding that certain things happen for the overall betterment of people. One group is fighting to make it better and one is fighting against it. Striking is a necessary action to fight for better conditions for workers and better outcomes for patients. I stand with the people who want it to be better.

You are a terminally philosophy-brained freak that proposes false choices and inaccurate dichotomies.

Isn't the whole point of a strike to make sure that the business is not properly staffed?

Anti labor propaganda

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every event in a hospital is investigated. The headline just seems like it wants to ruffle some feathers.

What if they couldn’t because of the nursing shortage? Who is to blame here? Everyone.

There’s no shortage of nurses. There’s a shortage of nurses’ paychecks and quality of work.

Likely understaffed or if it was staffed, it had travel nurses who didn't specialize in NICU.

I've heard some pretty bad understaffing stories from nurses I know at Mount Sinai (5th Avenue main hospital). Some units have had high turnover rates in a year with nurses also having to do jobs that other hired folks (such as techs, orderlies, etc.) won't do.

It doesn't make sense to pay a premium for travel nurses + pay a commission to the staffing agency when you could just hire more full time nurses.

If you know a nurse who works there, it's likely they'll tell you the same if they've been there the past 2-3 years.

Medical mistakes and negligence should be investigated either way. Your post is making up a story, which is fun and cool, but a real story is actually unfolding.

Bad faith to make that claim when nobody has any idea yet.

But hey the nurses got an agreement that DSA isn't even happy with so I guess it was all worth.

There absolutely is a shortage of nurses. Why are you making things up? Why do people accept this lack of critical thinking based on emotions?

Management is responsible for adequate staffing, not workers. Hope this helps.

That is not the point of a strike. Again, it was up to the hospital to find the staff (agency, travelers, flex nurses) in the event that a strike was to occur. They were given ample time to do that when it was clear that the union members were not backing down from patient ratios. This equates to safer working conditions. It really is a vicious cycle where the problem stems from not hiring enough nurses.

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Alright, you got me. I wasted time engaging a troll.

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This scenario requires 3 hands

I apologize for calling you a troll then. You're just aggressively stupid. I don't understand how people like you can be so confident in your opinions despite knowing nothing about a topic. The hospital admins and the strikers both acknowledged staffing was a key issue here, you're the only low effort troll pretending otherwise.

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It's the owner's job to supply staffing. If staff walks out due to poor conditions it's the owner's fault for anything that happens as a result.

This odious person is so predictable. Attempting to denigrate the nurses and DSA. Lame-ass Con.

Aren’t you the same guy who last winter trolled the #BronxFire for that entire week, as a disgusting apologist for the landlords.

Wonder why?

Maybe he himself is one. He’s apparently once claimed that he had 700k in funds (check his posts) for which he appealed to the public for how to invest. I could go on…

Folks, I urge you to read this guy’s posting history.

This person will troll anything regarding workers rights, the poor, socialists, the homeless, etc.

Notice how you're still ignoring their repeated calls to address staffing numbers? You're so committed to pushing this greedy nurses narrative that you're ignoring what half the negotiation was about. You're a disingenuous troll.