New York-Presbyterian, the largest private hospital system in New York, has launched an offensive against nurses this summer. In two ongoing legal cases, the system is intensifying its attacks on working conditions and on the right to organize. In response, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), which claims to represent nurses at New York-Presbyterian, has offered merely empty gestures and comments from the sidelines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
New York-Presbyterian had an operating profit of $112.5 million for the first quarter of this year. It is one of the city\u2019s most profitable hospital systems. Like hospital systems worldwide, New York-Presbyterian makes its profits by cutting costs and employing as few nurses as possible. Understaffing is associated not only with worse patient outcomes, but also with increased stress and risk of burnout among nurses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July, New York-Presbyterian filed a petition in Manhattan Federal District Court, seeking to have a penalty of more than $270,000 overturned. An arbitrator had ordered the system to pay this money to nurses who had endured understaffing. But New York-Presbyterian argued in its petition that the system had made \u201cgood-faith efforts\u201d to improve staffing. Implicitly acknowledging that staffing remains inadequate, the system blamed this problem on the \u201cmarket conditions for nursing staff in the area.\u201d For good measure, New York-Presbyterian complained that the award was \u201cpunitive\u201d and that the contract did not provide for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In June, New York-Presbyterian appealed to the US Supreme Court to uphold its firing of a nurse and union organizer in March 2020. Management at Hudson Valley Hospital in Cortlandt Manor, New York, accused experienced nurse Rosamaria Tyo of patient abandonment when she walked out of an operating room while a patient was undergoing complicated spinal surgery. But Tyo did not have a hands-on assignment; she was working as a circulating nurse, and her responsibilities were to document and coordinate nursing care, as well as to supervise a trainee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tyo left the operating room to meet the chief nursing officer about NYSNA\u2019s first contract with the hospital. The meeting turned into a heated confrontation, and the hospital fired Tyo two weeks later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTyo excused herself from the operating room, without permission or coverage, leaving her orientee unsupervised, in order to attend a gathering of union representatives,\u201d New York-Presbyterian\u2019s lawyers argued in their petition to the Supreme Court. But an administrative judge held that the hospital had fired Tyo for her union activity and must reinstate her with back pay. The National Labor Relations Board and a federal appeals court in New York later upheld that decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its petition, New York-Presbyterian argued that the three tribunals that ruled against it had allowed themselves to \u201cliterally \u2018play doctor.\u2019\u201d The system asked the Supreme Court to declare that when examining cases involving hospital workplace issues, courts should show \u201ca proper respect for who possesses expertise on the issues.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in fact, it is New York-Presbyterian that is not showing respect for expertise; the lead surgeon in the operating room on the day in question recommended that Tyo be reinstated. She now works at a hospital that is not part of the New York-Presbyterian system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
NYSNA has not organized a fight against New York-Presbyterian in either of these two legal cases. The system\u2019s willingness to ask the Supreme Court to uphold its firing of Tyo \u201chas a really chilling effect on the workforce,\u201d Pat Kane, executive director of NYSNA, told the New York Times. But the union is content to confine the dispute to the courts, which favor the interests of capital, rather than organizing a walkout to demand Tyo\u2019s reinstatement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, NYSNA has allowed New York-Presbyterian to resist the arbitrator\u2019s imposition of a $270,000 penalty and drag out the dispute for months. This long process was established in the current contract, which the union trumpeted as a victory for nurses. NYSNA claims that safe staffing can be achieved through agreements that provide arbitration processes to enforce it. In reality, these contracts institutionalize understaffing, as the current experience shows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n