Nurses from Montefiore Medical Center held a boisterous rally in front of the hospital’s main entrance last week for a fair contract and better working conditions.
More than 100 Montefiore nurses paraded with signs, noisemakers and whistles on Gun Hill Road at lunchtime last Monday. Judith Sheridan-Gonzalez, head of the union for the Medical Center’s Moses division, cheered them on using a bullhorn. “They say cut back, we say fight back,” she shouted. “Diginity, respect, it’s the patients we protect!”
Lourdes Blanco, the vice president for the union at Moses, said Montefiore nurses have been working without a contract for nearly 16 months and are concerned about their pensions and benefits.
“We just want to secure our benefits,” Blanco said. “Right now, we are very leery because we feel like they are trying to play with our pension money and that’s just not fair.”
Sheridan-Gonzalez said the two sides are far apart on how much each side will contribute to pension and other benefit plans.
Nurses are also highlighting their working conditions. They say the nurse-to-patient ratios set 10 years ago are not being enforced and that they are over-extended.
Montefiore officials declined to comment, citing ongoing negotiations.
“In hiring us, Montefiore took a vow to take care of us, and provide us with the tools we need to take care of our patients.” said Michelle West, a pediatric Intensive Care Unit nurse. “But for the past 16 months, they have not lived up to their vow.”
“We nurses are always here, 24/7,” said Tabia Lamothe, RN. “We are the ones that run the hospital, really. Doctors go in and out, write orders and they go. We are there all the time.”
The rally coincided with Nurses Week, which Montefiore nurses boycotted by not accepting food and gifts offered by the hospital. The nurses asked the hospital to send the food to Part of the Solution, a multi-service center and soup kitchen on Webster Avenue, so it wouldn’t go to waste.
Negotiations between the nurses and management are scheduled to resume on May 25.
Ed. Note: The Norwood News is published by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center.
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.