As Bernie Sanders supports striking NJ nurses, RWJ Hospital decries 'taxpayer-funded press event'

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders came to New Brunswick on Friday to hear from some of the 1,700 nurses on strike at RWJ University Hospital — a show of support that delighted union leaders but that hospital management dismissed as a political stunt.

Vermont’s senior senator was the lone representative of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions present for a field hearing to call attention to a national shortage of nursing. Sanders, the committee's chair, also spoke passionately about the nurses who have been on strike for 83 days and nurse-to-patient staffing ratios union members say drove their walkout.

“I know going out on strike is not something that you do every day. You've never done it in your lives,” Sanders told the nurses who packed the hearing room at Rutgers University. “And the idea that you're willing to go without paychecks, to walk on picket lines, to deal with all of the stuff out there in order to protect your patients is rather extraordinary. So, on behalf of the American people, thank you.”

Sanders said he’s concerned about shortages in the health care industry, including among doctors, dentists, mental health professionals and nurses. The New Brunswick hearing focused on nurse-patient staffing ratios, which is the core sticking point between the union and management in the strike.

Sanders sat alone at his table. He criticized RWJBarnabas Health CEO Mark Manigan for declining his invitation to testify at the hearing.

“I would have asked them how their health care system could afford to spend over $100 million on traveling nurses since the strike began, but somehow cannot afford to mandate safe staffing ratios to improve the lives of patients and nurses at the hospital,” Sanders said. The hospital said in a statement to Sanders’ committee it has spent $103 million to date on costs of the strike, including visiting nurses.

But RWJBarnabas Health management viewed the hearing as more of a political show than a fact-finding mission.

“It's unconscionable that the senior senator from Vermont overtly inserts himself into labor negotiations between a hospital in New Jersey and our nurses — and his public statements today illustrate that true intent,” said hospital spokesperson Wendy Gottsegen. “It’s clearly obvious now why not a single member of the Senate HELP Committee — Democrat or Republican — will join the senator at this taxpayer-funded press event.”

In a written statement, Manigan told the Sanders committee that all the hospitals in the RWJBarnabas Health system have safe staffing guidelines.

“Our patients receive safe and compassionate care across all of our services, as evidenced by multiple quality indicators and national quality rankings, which reflect our unwavering commitment to the communities we serve,” the statement by Manigan said.

His statement said hospital leaders agree that nursing shortages are a critical problem, but oppose any mandates on staffing ratios.

”This can be best achieved through evidence‐based approaches, including acuity‐based staffing tools, nurse‐led committees and tracking, rather than legislative oversight or mandated staffing ratios,” Manigan said in his statement to the committee.

Union leaders have said in addition to guaranteed minimum staffing levels, they want a cap on insurance premiums for the length of their three-year contracts, as well as wage increases.

Earlier this month, RWJ officials said they’d sought to end the strike, offering “top-of-market wages, as well as safe-staffing standards that meet or exceed levels set forth by legislation in states like California and in a number of hospital labor settlements across the country.”

In the leadup to the strike, hospital officials also said they’d offered $20-per-hour bonuses to nurses if the hospital were to fall below set staffing standards, as well as increased on-call pay.

During the hearing, several nurses testified about the difficulty of caring for critically ill patients with too few staff. The COVID pandemic called attention to the lack of staffing, but the nurses say they have faced shortages for many years.

“We are in dire straits,” said Judy Danella, a staff nurse at RWJ Barnabas Health and president of their union, United Steelworkers Local No. 4-200. “As frontline caregivers and nurses, we know that safe staffing is crucial to the health and well being of our patients and our ability to provide quality, safe patient care.”

The nurses described a downward spiral of care where staff shortages place an ever-increasing amount of stress on nurses. And that, in turn, causes more nurses to leave the profession, exacerbating the shortages.

“The experience of fearing and of witnessing this harm is resulting in moral injury, a form of trauma caused by not being able to provide the care they believe patients need and feeling that they are powerless to make change,” said Patricia Pittman, director of George Washington University's Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity, during the hearing. “Among the outcomes of this distress are depression and suicide. Nurses commit suicide at twice the rate of the general population.”

Research by the National Council of State Boards of Nurses found approximately 100,000 nurses have left the profession since 2020, and New Jersey is considered to be one of the most understaffed states in the country.

California passed a law mandating staffing minimums for nurses that went into effect in 2004. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown has introduced a federal bill that would establish nurse staffing ratios. A similar bill in New Jersey's state Senate has been introduced but not yet passed through the health committee.

Sanders became the chair of the U.S. Senate’s health committee this year, a powerful perch for the progressive who has fought for worker rights and access to health care during his decades in Washington. He says nursing shortages are a key issue nationwide that will be the focus of the committee’s work.

At Friday’s hearing, Sanders reserved his harshest statements for the management of the nonprofit hospital system.

“I don't understand what you're doing. I do not understand how you can go to your community and say you want to provide high-quality care to your patients and you have the leading experts on quality care – 1,700 of them – saying you're not doing it,” he said.