More than 100 people gathered Tuesday morning in front of University Medical Center (UMC) in New Orleans to support the latest strike from the hospital’s nurses.
National Nurses United (NNU) — the union representing the UMC nurses — has been negotiating new staff contracts with hospital administrators since March 2024. This is the fifth strike in just over a year.
The mantra of the crowd that braved the morning’s cold snap was: retention, retention, retention. The nurses are calling for contracts that prioritize retaining nursing staff through better pay and benefits. They say adequate staffing and more experienced nurses can help improve care and make hospitals safer for both patients and staff.
“They’re all related,” said Kisha Montes, a nurse in UMC’s behavioral health unit. “If you don’t have the staffing, people leave, because they’re being overworked and that becomes a problem. A lot of the nurses are just tired.”
A spokesperson for UMC said the union’s proposals seek more than a “60% increase over current wages and substantial [sic] restrict how UMC can staff the hospital, inhibiting our ability to care for patients in emergency and mass casualty incidents.”
Coinciding with the strike, NNU released a report that found LCMC Health, the health care nonprofit that operates UMC, has the highest average charge-to-cost ratio of New Orleans hospitals, has made more than $800 million in profit since 2013 and has paid its executives more than double its total charity care costs.
The report recommends that the hospital’s executives listen to nurses’ concerns, safely staff every unit and commit to establishing standards for charity care. It also called attention to “aggressive collection practices,” including using third-party debt collectors and reporting medical debt to credit bureaus, garnishing wages or property and harassing phone calls.
In addition to the nurses' union, other workers' rights organizations were also in attendance to support the strike, including Step Up Louisiana, United Teachers of New Orleans, Starbucks Workers United, and New Orleans City Councilmember and former mayoral candidate Oliver Thomas.
“I don't understand why nurses have to beg to be paid and compensated for their work,” Thomas said. “They shouldn't be out here striking to get compensated, to get paid for benefits for their families. So I'm here supporting the people who take care of us.”
Several community members also joined the crowd, including Jude Broad, who said he wanted to come to support the nurses.
“This is a community effort. It's not about who I'm with, it's about what I'm for. And I'm for seeing the nurses that save our people from gunshot wounds, pregnancy — they help a lot of people and they deserve payments,” Broad said.
The nurses' union has scheduled previous demonstrations that are sometimes linked to big events in the city, including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stop and the Super Bowl, ahead of which, the NFL players’ union issued a statement in support of the striking nurses.
This three-day strike started on Veterans’ Day. Shonda Franklin, a nurse at UMC, took a moment to honor veterans in her speech to the crowd.
“Those veterans stood for something far greater than themselves just as we're standing here today,” Franklin said. “But our battle is a little bit different. We're fighting a battle for respect. We're fighting for recruitment of new nurses, retaining the seasoned nurses that are already here, we're fighting for fair compensation to reflect our skills, to reflect our experience, to reflect our commitment. We're fighting for the future of nursing.”
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR. Support for public health coverage comes from The Commonwealth Fund.
