the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jan 19, 2026
Flashing their red National Nurses United scarves, 15,000 New York City nurses struck several hospitals of 3 major healthcare systems on January 12.
Every nurse in the country will be familiar with the nurses’ protest. Overwork, burnout, relentless mandatory overtime, do not make up for nurses who should be hired but are not.
Patients and nurses are endangered when too few nurses have to cover too many patients. In 2023, New York nurses also struck to bring up staffing levels. But hospital promises did not come true. The nurses are out again.
It’s clear that the quality of care in this country is declining, while healthcare industry profits soar. The fights of healthcare workers are truly every worker’s fight.
Nurses and case managers organized in Teamsters Local 322 at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc, Michigan, have been on strike over 135 days. The 750 workers struck on September 1, Labor Day, 2025, when the hospital would not agree to a new contract. Instead, it began wage and benefit cuts, especially raising nurses’ own health insurance premiums.
Safe staffing levels are a big issue. During Covid, as in every hospital across the country, the nurses and other hospital staff worked to exhaustion under epidemic conditions. Nurses say that the hospital system wanted those hours and those patient loads to become their new normal!
A local tragedy revealed exactly the hospital’s attitude, compared to the nurses’. On September 28, a mass shooter killed 4 and wounded 8 at a nearby church. The striking emergency room nurses rushed from the picket line to the ER to volunteer help. Hospital management blocked them.
In the background is the fact that Henry Ford Health has long resisted unions. It has 13 system hospitals, but at only two are nurses organized. These two were part of the deal when Henry Ford Health absorbed the Genesys system in 2024. HFH is now spending huge amounts of money to pay temp nurses, trying to outlast the strikers, and doubtless trying to prevent the union idea from spreading to the rest of its hospitals.