The Great Minnesota Nurses Strike

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 fift person nurses strike. Uh up up up in Wisconsin. And to talk with us about that. Wait, did I say that right? Minnesota? Did I? I? Did I confuse Wisconsin and Minnesota. Oh my god, I've

always do this. They did treat a strike, you are, yeah, 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 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 only 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 first thing that I want to talk about is the kind of strike that you all were doing, because this is something that I've seen a lot with nurses strikes, but I don't think people who aren't in nurses unions like talking about very much. Which is basically doing a three day strike or doing a strike that's for 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 health care sector at all to do one day, two day, three day, five day, seven day strikes. UM. We usually leave like an open ended strike for kind of a lasted je 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. UM. That UM, that type of disruption in capital is UM has been really effective um 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 think from 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, which makes me really hard and 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 limited amount of time that it would be for like

hiring them full time for a definite strike. Yeah, exactly, so travel nurses. I mean they are those strike nurses men strictly just for those three days. They are oriented for you know, a few hours prior to starting at seven am on Monday. UM, so there's not a lot of time to learn the entire facility. And since we are gone, the only ones left to orientate our managers or any nurses that have to stay for whatever reason. We really didn't have money at all across the line. Um.

So it just compromises 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 airs. Um. They try to keep those issues as internal as possible and not disclose them to the public. But there's a lot that happened. They've It's funny all the media reports are like or we're just like straight up printing press releases being like

there have been no internal disruptions. Stomach, 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 and strike. I mean, they try 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. Um. There was a lot of

readmissions because of that. You're discharging people too quickly. Um. I know what the children's hospitals they actually um like shuttled forty four children out to other surrounding hospitals two because they couldn't get enough travelers to work. You can't get fifteen thousands travelers. So that's what they did to try to undermine us. It's a lot of moving things around, and I am hoping the public there's an uproar with the public about this. That's 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, God, so yeah, I guess we should move into like how we got to the point where fifteen thousand nurses or went on strike, which I think, I mean certainly the largest nurses strike like in the in the private sector. I can remember, Like it's I think I think it's one of the largest the US ever had. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can we talk about like I get and this this is there's also sort of a broader question here about like what the U. S healthcare system looks like in year two of this plague in the sector that's already been sort of just decimated by like incredibly veno profit seeking, greedy corporations. Yeah yeah, so what what what? What? What have been the conditions that have been leading up to this strike? They 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, um, just to maximize profit. It's um like there their whole goal is kind of like how airlines overbooked 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. UM. They've also are starting their own insurance companies just to

double dip into communities wallets. So that's been going on prior to the pandemic. Pandemic hit they were not ready. They didn't have enough PPE at all, because it's not there's no UM, it's not financially incentivized to have extra

pp ON. And that's their logic. I remember in the beginning of the pandemic, like my my aunt and uncle work for hospital, and like we were trying to get the masks, and like 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 o god, it was so grim. It was Yeah, it was a mess, and we didn't have enough PPU. We had to reuse stuff

instantly UM. And we were never compensated for it either. UM. We just were forced to work harder and longer UM for the same pay. And now hospitals are trying to normalize that staffing UM shortage and say, well that's it, that's you know, so you just have to work with what we're giving you. UM. In this shortage is just it's causing unnecessary medical errors and deaths, 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 too, just like fat in 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 um, 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, UM. So travel nurses come across her like across the entire um nation, and

they are contracted through travel companies that work with hospitals. UM. So if there's a nursing shortage, um, there will be open positions to apply for those contract positions that are like short terms, so either like a four week, six week or if it's like a strike contract, it would be like three days, seven days, whatever it might be. UM.

And they're paid handsomely. I know for our three days strike, those travel nurses, those strike nurses specifically for three days, may ten k each for three days and they didn't even know the facility. Some of them never even worked in a hospital. I don't I don't understand the require aerments. 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 to improve our profession when you have people that can replace you. Um, 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. UM, they don't take vacation, they don't call in six Um.

They save the employer a lot of money um because they don't have to like provide any hospital resources such as like employee health or workers compensation or anything like that. 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. UM. 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. Um. Also, when you have more travel nurses at a hospital, that's less funding that can go to our union. So like we pay union dudes every month, UM, and if hospitals are hiring more travel nurses, our union gets less funny, less power sadly, Okay, do you do? You do? You know? Who else wants everyone to work as contract workers so

they can't unionize. Ever, it's it's the products and services

that support the show and we're back. So all right, I guess moving on from that, well, okay, I guess I guess before we fully move on to talking about how the strike was sort of organized, UM, can we talk a little bit more about what staffing shortages looks like and what 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. Mhm UM. So with inadequate inadequate nursing, UM, staffing levels by experienced nurses. UM, there's an increased rate of hey sent falls, infections, medical errors, UM, increase in deaths, increasing pressure ulcers, UM, increase in readmission rates, so having to go back to the hospital because UM, you weren't given like high quality care at the hospital. It is just kind of mediocre if nurses are kind of strapped with time and I 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 are treating patients are retreating the day um. Our hospital at Methodist has about four 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? UM. The e ER will board patients meeting a patient will stay on a cart and they'll be in a hallway and always will be lined up with patients that are just waiting for other patients and other units to be discharged so they can take that that UM, so they can wait in the e R 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 in 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 will 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 an

advance at all, it's not cost effective. Yeah. Well, I mean it's funny because it's like it's it really seems it's sort of one of those things where it's like, literally, this entire process would be enormously less expensive if you hire like four more people and didn't close every hospital around you. But like you know, it's it's it's not 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 exactly, it's just like people are profitable and not healthy people. Yeah, m hmm, yeah, I mean it's really it's like there is just something like sort of particularly venal and disgusting about here. It's like, you know, it's it's all of the same, like, Okay, well, we we've we've we've built up a monopoly, and we're using your monopoly to force everyone to user services. And then we're you know, we're we're using contract workers to a place to people who

normally do the job. But it's like, well, it's with healthcare, 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. 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 meeting. Like if you're if you work on a medical surgical unit, it's usually like fortified patients is what's recommended for one

nurse to have for twelve 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 Boble, there's flexing up. Why aren't you flexing up? And it's just it's that type of like corporate speak and empowerment language, um that

forces us to risk our license. Yeah, And I think one of one of the consequence 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 a free sources and you're making them take too many patients, it's that people just

start quitting. And yeah, can you talk a bit about sort of the shortage that has been happening because of that too, because that's I think a really bleak like just in the long term too. It's just 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. It's really bad. Absolutely, Yeah. Pandemic hit and nurses realize that

they're just they're not being paid their worth. There's travel jobs that are you can make two hundred grant a year, three undergrand a year, um, 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 leave. Um. So they kind of just sell our jobs back to us.

But it's not good healthcare. Yeah, it is. It's like you know, I've talked about this with like like people who work at Starbucks for example, where it's like, well, okay, like if if you're just constant moving people around and nobody's like actually stays at a place, and you never you never build up a community of people who are working with like your cares, you know, it's like okay, well you're not going to get good stuff. It's like yeah, like this is like like this is people's lives exactly.

And those UM travel travel nurses, I mean their their goals are usually like financial freedom, UM like all of our goals UM so, and their goals are always short term. You know, 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 area errors? I mean there issues there. I mean, they never will

hold the employer accountable. Yeah, and especially like it seems like like, you know, even even even if like everyone walking 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'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 to push all of their UM permanent employees into traveling. So once that industry becomes saturated and you can decrease wages and we'd have to compete amongst each other, UM for certain jobs with certain hours that we need or whatever, we'll just be Um, it's just a race to the bottom. We're just gonna Yeah, then the employer

will control the market and it's yeah. Um, and I can't imagine twenty 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, it's it's just doesn't seem like a good way to do healthcare. Like

yeah that also yeah, m hm, exactly. Yeah, So I guess the next thing I want to talk about in terms of okay, so how do you make this better? Is about Yeah, this is a very large bolt the hospital strike across multiple cities, which is really impressive thing to pull off. Was warning shalk about how how that happens. Yeah, you know, the pandemic really pushed a lot of nurses to want to fight for change. Um, and I think

that it all started there. We all started coming together with the same issues and problems, and um, yeah finally just started organizing more. Um. All these hospitals were currently unionized, but somewhere more like involved in their union than others 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 there 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. We also want to ask about what the negotiation process has been like, because I mean five months is I mean, you know, okay like that you very rarely get fast contracts when you're dealing with bosses.

But yeah, like the contract negotiation process seems to have been really bad, even by sort of like regular contract association standards. Yeah, for sure. 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 hied behind a corporate lawyer.

It was just a union busting lawyer. And all they do is just gaslight and demonize this 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 anything, especially like like the like the calling in sick too much is like, well, yeah, okay, maybe your nurses wouldn't be getting sick if you were making them work with no

people like with ppe in a pandemic, Like Jesus Christ. Oh, it's just it's just comic all the arguments as they have, I know, and it's like we don't we can't ever get vacation that we're asking for. I mean, one of one of our proposals is just to get a two week block vacation for every nurse in the hospital guaranteed every year. Um, because we don't even get that. We we have a cap on our vaccasion hours and then we get deny our vacation constantly people calling sick because

we need a day off, we need a break. Yeah, We're like yeah, yeah, like okay, Like if you have vacation nows but you can't use them, you don't actually have them like, it's not how this works exactly. Yeah, it's it's a benefit they control. Yeah. What are the things that I've been reading about that you've 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 all right, like giving giving workers a role in staffing decisions. Yeah, yeah, you can you talk about that because that that's really interesting to me. Yeah, absolutely so. Um, I mean currently we don't own our profession, We have no say in staffing ratios.

The hospitals decide um what is safe care, and they're doing it absolutely wrong. Um. 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, um, they're staying longer in the hospital, and in order to provide safer care, we you know, these need this many nurses for this many patients. Um. So what would that be on like a sort of like okay, you like

you have a negotiation. You said, this is just is like the like this is just the ratio is just like a data This is an individual day to day thing. Um. Yeah, I'm wondering how this would work. Yeah, right now, let's see. I know we are asking for like a committee that's made up of mean administrative staff but also nurses, but we want the nurses to be able to have the power to implement policies and change um if they think it needs to be done. Um. So, it would be

like a grid review. I think it's nearly as what we're asking for, um, but can be up to quarterly if need be. Kind of just depending on what we're hearing from other employees on other units. Um So. I I think it's kind of like on a a week to week evaluation to see what's working and what's not. Um. 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.

Well and also okay, it's like, oh no, we've we've we've taken a nurse away from the bedside for one hour to go to a committee meeting where they say we could put more nurses in, and like we want this committee like made outside of UM like that, like those nurses scheduleds and then we also want them to be paid for their time. Hospital disagrees with all of that. They don't even want to pay nurses for their time

to create safe staffing ratios. It's hard. So like the people that are empowered, they're just a bunch of narcissists, that's all they are. Um, And that's the only way to remain empower 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, and like they really seem like a kind of people who you can only actually the only language they understand is power, and like the only way you can get to invest them of anything is just like whacking them over the head with it. Which David Graper had this thing about, Um, it 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 if you have a lot of like if you have 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 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 cure. A bunch of people who have been so powerful for so long they don't even like they don't even know how to make a compelling argument because I've never had to. All all they all they've ever had to do is use brute force. M h. 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. Mm hmm. Exactly. Well. And also nurses like we're natural people pleasers were 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 they're killing people for money. That there's not like

you know, there's not actual moral justifications here. Exactly I know. Yeah, it's just God, what a terrible way to run a health care system, like just oh you know, and 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 exactly like the elites. And you would pay that hospital like a country club membership, so like to

under granted year or whatever it's. They're not going to take Medicare, they're not going to take Medicaid. Um, it'll be strictly out of pocket, not insurance, out of pocket um money. And you can just get all of the care you need at that one facility. Um, it'll have all specialties. You can see them same day, you can text your doctor. It's just health care that's just on demand and readily available for those people that can pay it.

I know, I mean what I Meanwhile, everyone else is like waiting seventeen hours with like a hole in them in a hallway exactly like fair View 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 um

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 gonna you're just going to keep all of that money and continue not funding the poorer hospitals, Like you won't you already do this. You can't actually fool anyone who has a bit more than two seconds like looking at

this works exactly. I know. I know they're going to prioritize those executive hospitals and just fuddle all their money and resources that direction. It'll for sure be non union and they will push so much non union propaganda athletes too. M Yeah, it sucks. Suck it, it does suck, I know, and just a lot of people don't know about it.

It's scary what we're what we're heading towards, and that's that's that's what we're fighting for, our fighting against and I mean, I mean, I will say like 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 and like why that kind of thing happens, and I think a lot of like, Okay, there is any stent to which people sort of don't care about violenceness, an extent to which people like are able to sort

of like rationalize it. But but I think there is an extent to which like the average person on the street has no idea this is happening until there's like sitting in a hospital room, and then they don't understand why it's happening, and so I think, yeah, like I don't like this. This is not an acceptable state of affairs.

And I think I don't know, like the when people start to fight back, and then when people like actually know about what is happening, I think it's gonna be like hopefully 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 the hospitals just push that propaganda that they're underfunded and they can't afford stand, 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 and nurses that want to deal with this ship. Yeah, they're just leaving the bedside for better jobs.

I think the thing I want to sort of start closing on is about Okay, like that there there is some negotiation going on about pay raises because hey, guess what inflation is happening, etcetera, etcetera. But like the extent to which the negotiations aren't about like a aren't about pay because this is something we've been seeing. This is a this is a thing with the with the rail strike that's temporarily been averted. This is the thing there

has been a thing in a lot of places. It's been a thing that's been dragging people out of the workplace just everywhere. Is that, Yeah, Like it's like this strike isn't really like if I think it's like, I don't know, Okay, to tell me if this is wrong. 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 paying for 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 think, Um, we're definitely not paid our worth. But also that's not all we want. There's definitely way more to it. Um Yeah, it's um, we just we

want to reclaim our profession. Yeah. Like it seems like it really seems like they're like this the stuff that's happening, and I think sort of broadly like is like it's not just sort of about conversation. It's about the fact that for I mean, my entire lifetime for like twenty five years, but like before that, like employers have had almost limited power and they've used are almost limited power

to just make everyone's lives absolutely living hell. And they've they've used it to sort of like just to force to force people to work hours that are like unbelievable, to force people to like you know, like like for force people to stand there with like like cans so they can pee into 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 something actually has to change about how the workplace works, because otherwise people are just going to stop. Exactly yeah, exactly, um yeah, I know.

One of our proposals, we want to work a max of three twelve hours shifts in a row because right now our contract says we can't work more than seven twelve hours shifts in a row, and we obviously that is way too much and that's something that would mean even even three is like like isn't really Like every single time I read one of these things, it's like okay, like hey, I like, yeah, okay, we 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 being asked to do, Like Jesus, 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 who needs PPE? Like really everyone in the splice's like, oh, who who needs to have? Who who needs to have like stories of critical spare parts? No one this this will never come

back to haunts. We will never be in any position where we said you don't have the spirit parts. 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 SafeCare and like safety for ourselves. Um. Yeah, the hospitals didn't include us on any decisions during the pandemic. 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 we're nursed with COVID Yeah, which also I wouldn't like. But did you get COVID? What is happening? Um? I only had it once that I know of. Yeah, I mean okay, oldly had it once. Is like like, 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. Oh yeah, just god, I don't know.

That's just so bleak, like 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 um COVID population. You know, we only did surgery if if UM they really needed it done and if they were positive for COVID, so we kind of got to pick and choose a little bit. UM. But other nurses obviously they could not avoid COVID. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't. It's just God, like, I can't just go like just this is just the

worst possible way you can run a medical system. And it's just I know, and I know, like I know in UM. Let see, Sanford is another big hospital joint giant that's like in South Dakota, North Dakota, and I'm from South Dakota, so that's kind of all like really hits home for me. UM is they're hiring seven 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 and they'll sign like a three year contract um, the hospital will provide housing for them and and they will drop wages significantly. In the nursing world, especially in South Dakota and North Dakota, they're 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 actually did the ante calls talking about who are doctors, Like we're in North Dakota for a bit, and they were just like this is the worst, and they like they left for 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 interesting what the Philippines too, where like there's there's like there are a whole industries of like basically training people and then shipping them to the US so they can be like just horribly exploited. Um. And then that's been like one of the things that's been like I don't know, like bolstering the prophets of the medical sector for a long time is the usually just

like import people and exploit them. Yeah, and like the fact that they're like, oh god, this is some like the the fact that these people are gonna be like living in like houses that are owned by their bosses. Is some real like yeah gilded age ship. Yeah, I mean well, I mean the thing I think it most like this is this is like standard practice in China,

for example, and it's a disaster. Like I like, I don't I don't know if people have ever actually seen pictures of what the inside of these dormitories look like, but like it is like these are you get a room that is like smaller than the college dorm room that doesn't have air conditioning that like I don't know, I I we talked about on this show, like the which we talked about a worker like a couple of weeks ago who like died from the heat wave because

when he came home, I mean, he people working a bunch of shifts and he had to work, like he had to work a shift in like a hundred and four degrees like loading stuff onto a train, and he came back home and there was no air conditioning and

he's in this tunty apartment. He died in his bed because you know, it was it was too hot, and like like this is the kind of stuff that happens, especially when you have, like like when when when you're sleeping in corporate dormitories and we're sleeping in a place that like your boss owns, Like this is the ship that happens, and it's really really bleak. And 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 highly doubt they're going to be able to unionize. Yeah, because yeah, because I mean I say everything, like like the way the visa process works, right, Like it's really easy to like if someone's here to work visa and then suddenly you're like, oh, hey, I want to unize, is like, well, nope, screw you.

You don't have a job anymore. We're gonna get you deported. Yeah, exactly, which I mean, I guess it's it's it's you know, it's it's it's another one of those things where like like we all of the different sort of disparate like fights people are having our acted like like this, this this wouldn't be happening, like if we didn't have the sort of border regime that we have right now, Like okay, if firmigration system 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 you weren't in this sort of moments of like you know, if you if you weren't at a moment where the power of unions has been collapsing for decades, Like if you weren't and if you 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 uh yeah, like like I feel like I feel like the medical sector is like like people do. Working in healthcare is like it's one of these places where just like every possible it it's kind of it's kind of like prisons where it's 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 healthcare would be right now. Yeah,

I don't know. Not good. I mean like I can't I can keep going back to China because it's like that's like the other healthcare system as a disaster that like I have family and it's like, well, I mean, I guess the thing that's been happening in the U S too, of like the increasing violence you can staff, but like China has a huge, a huge problem with basically riots breaking out because people like someone's family member dies because their their care was really bad, and so

they'll just be like a riot and people will go tack the doctors. It's like yeah, and it's like okay, like I get why they're doing this, but it's like it sucks, and this is this is a huge problem they've had with with retention because their numbers are like they're they're like their staff to patient ratios are unreal awful and yeah, and like you know like that that

that kind of stuff makes health care systems fall apart absolutely. Yeah, 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 faults 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, it's actually yeah yeah

and yeah. So if they kind of do this for a nursing deal, um, I mean South Dakota and at Dakota their right to work states, so they it's almost impossible to unionize. You can, but it's it takes a lot of work. Uh, but when most your staff is already travelers, like I was told by another nurse, like in North Dakota, Sanford their staff is travelers, Well, how

the help can you even attempt to unionize? And that's that's the goal of hospitals is just to create so much turnover where yeah, I mean it's just yes, just turning hospitals into Amazon, which the system meditoriously works great, Like it's exactly, and travelers m are less likely to speak up because they're just afraid of their contract being canceled or they're going to be blacklisted, and blacklisted just means like there's a um common website that all hospitals

will go on just to look at travel nurses that are recommended, um not to call all or not to give a contract to Jesus Yeah, exactly so, and you can blacklist a nurse for any reason, um yeah, and the reasons they're 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 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 a not We're we were literally going to put your name on a list that everyone just has, Like oh god, yeah exactly. 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 a terrible care. Yeah okay, we we Well, 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, will help with contract negotiations and be like, just in general, try to 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 M and a Minnesota nursing association where we do like to have people share their stories about surprise bills or firsthand experiences with understaffing, UM,

et cetera. UM, and that's something like we've just been kind of collecting stories, UM, just so we can kind of keep exposing the corruption. UM. Also, donating to our strike fund is always much appreciated. Yeah, yeah, we can it will put it, put a link to that in the description. Yeah, that's how you create change, just this 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 so. I feel like I covered a lot. UM. Yeah,

I just wanted to bring awareness to this topic. Yeah, thank you so much for bringing on the show. I'm 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 you for having me appreciate it. Yeah, this has been nickuld Happen Here, a podcast by cool Zone Media and I Guess also my Heart. Uh yeah. You can find us in the usual places. Uh yeah. Make make the world a better

place for nurses and a worse place for hospital executives. Yes, it could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com. Check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.