BROOKLYN, April 18—Rank-and-file hospital workers are demanding their department boss stop the harassment and intimidation immediately! They’ve circulated a petition inside the hospital, demanding fired workers be reinstated. Although many signed, so far the hospital bosses have refused to act.
Dreadful Working Conditions
The bosses are pushing workers to the limit, firing and writing up workers in the transport department for “not working hard enough.” They want workers to over-compensate for shortages in staff and an increasing workload.
Workers at another Brooklyn hospital have been laid off and people leaving are not replaced. We finish work every day exhausted. Many have gotten sick, but when we use our sick time, bosses call us lazy. We have the same salary for double the work — one person doing the work of two or three. At the drop of a hat, the bosses send us to labor relations, where they fabricate lies, bullying some into resigning. When it comes to us workers, the bosses “have no money,” but meanwhile they’re remodeling, throwing out relatively new furniture, computers and carpeting.
The transport workers move patients throughout the hospital while on their feet their entire day, except for their lunch break. They cover a lot of distance before their shift ends. “While transporting patients we’re constantly being paged to go to other floors in the hospital,” reported one worker. In the last six months, three workers from this department were fired because they transported the wrong patients to different areas within the hospital. One had been on the job for 30 years!
Black, Latin and women workers face the brunt of these sexist, racist working conditions and attacks. They then go home and do a second shift to maintain their households.
Workers Fight Back, Union Stands Still
The transport workers’ reformist union, 1199/SEIU, has been passive in this fight for workers’ demands against the capitalist bosses. Like all unions, they’ve been relying on the bosses’ system of filing grievances and arbitrations to solve workers’ problems, both of which take a very long time. Most of the outcomes favor the bosses.
Like all unions, 1199/SEIU has also been trying to channel workers into the election game. It promotes the reformist idea that the class struggle is over and involvement in election campaigns is the only solution for healthcare workers. How many times can we hear the Demopublicans’ promises before we realize that voting is a dead-end? The politicos, from Governor Cuomo to Mayor de Blasio, from presidential candidates Trump to Clinton to Sanders, are dedicated to preserving the profit system.
PLP members are working with the healthcare workers in both hospitals to keep fighting. Armed with communist ideas, workers have waged and won many militant battles in the past, including informational picketing that saw workers pouring out from every department and confronting the hospital CEO directly in his office. Through these struggles we learn to see through the bosses’ tricks, how to unite and wield our power.
Keep Fighting, March on May Day!
Sometimes, it seems we fight the same battles over and over. As soon as we win something, the bosses start trying to take it back. Nevertheless, we have to challenge the ways they use and abuse us. On April 30, PLP will march through Brooklyn to celebrate May Day, the international working class holiday. We invite all Downstate workers to bring their struggle to May Day and commit to continuing the fight.
PLP fights for communist revolution as the only real solution for the working class.  Workers will build a communist world where all workers give their talents and efforts to building a society without racism, sexism, imperialist war and bosses’ profits. Read CHALLENGE regularly and join us on May Day.