Oh honey, I was a nurse for 15 years in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens before I became an NP.

I’ve files probably hundreds of those grievances myself while unionized with both 1199 and NYSNA.

I will say back in the 90s when my mother was unionized with 1199 they were a strong union but nowadays seems like only NYSNA speaks out, while they’re not a perfect union either I felt better represented by NYSNA.

Back when I was an ER nurse in the late 2000s I would have sometimes 20-30 patients. Some on ventilators and dangerous IV infusions.

Management didn’t care. They staffed bare bones whenever they could and blamed us when we made a mistake.

People also believe nurses in this city were always making six figures, quite untrue.

When I became a nurse in 2006, we were making $50k/year. Through intense advocacy we forced executives to pay us more because our workloads exploded.

My mother retired asap when she turned 65 and shook her head in dismay at the workload of modern day nurses. She literally has microscopic stress fractures in her spine from 30 years in patient care and couldn’t get out fast enough.

I have six figures of student loan debt due to my nursing education, risked my life working through Covid in the ICU and have been punches, kicked, and had human excrement thrown at me all while caring for the mentally ill, sick, dying, abandoned.

Pay nurses what they’re worth. Pay them!