Hospital Strike

The biggest strike in the history of U.S. hospitals bedeviled New York City last week. At six voluntary, nonprofit hospitals (four in Manhattan, one each in. The Bronx and Brooklyn), nurses' aides, orderlies, porters, kitchen and laundry help hit the bricks on orders of Local 1199, Retail Drug Employees Union, A.F.L.-C.I.O. This week, with no settlement in sight, the union was threatening to strike several more hospitals.

Thanks to weeks of forewarning, all the struck hospitals had laid in extra stocks of food and linens, had enrolled volunteers who ran trays (with pickup meals on paper plates), trundled patients to and from operating theaters, operated elevators. One Park Avenue matron, Mrs. Sidney Milan, showed up with her butler: she passed out trays while he ran an elevator. Since professional staffs (doctors and nurses) were not involved, patients suffered no serious ill effects.

With Relief, a Living. As usual, the disputants were miles apart on the strike's effectiveness. Said a hospital spokesman: only about 1,000 of 3,500 nonprofessional workers had heeded the call. Claimed the union: 3,200 out of 4,300 were out. But there was no question as to the issues: the union wanted recognition to bargain collectively for the workers, 27,000 of whom in New York City's 82 voluntary, nonprofit hospitals are woefully underpaid.* Local 1199 charged that the bulk of them make less than $40 (some as little as $32) for a work week of 40 hours or more, with no overtime or fringe benefits. Many also get relief payments to eke out a living. In hospitals operated by the city itself, corresponding workers have collective bargaining, get up to 75% more. By strike threats, the union had already won recognition at two voluntary hospitals, reported smooth relations there.

But voluntary hospitals are specifically exempted by both federal and state law from compulsory collective bargaining, and the struck six stuck to their legal guns. The Greater New York Hospital Association rejected Mayor Robert F. Wagner's suggestion that both sides submit their case to an impartial fact-finding commission. On strike's eve, the six hospitals got court orders to head it off, but the orders were ineffective because Local President Leon J. Davis, once an apostle of left-wing causes, went into hiding to avoid service.

Rhetorical Question. The hospitals were in a financial bind. All operate at whopping deficits (up to $1,872,000 last year for Manhattan's Mount Sinai, biggest of those struck). Retorted the union: underpaid employees should not be called on to subsidize hospitals. A major drain on the voluntary hospitals has been that the city pays them only $16 a day for care of indigent patients, though it budgets $28 a day in its own hospitals. On July 1 it will begin paying $20, and the hospitals promised to use the extra funds to raise nonprofessional workers' pay. It will amount to $6,000,000 a year, far short of what is needed.

At week's end the union stood fast in its demand for recognition, while the hospitals were equally firm in rejecting it. As State Supreme Court Justice George Tilzer wrestled with motions and counter-motions on the injunction suits, he felt that both sides had forgotten that the patients' welfare should be their first concern, asked exasperatedly: "Has reason been abandoned by all you people?" The question was rhetorical.

*Like their counterparts in Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo and St. Louis. Pay scales are still lower in the South, range higher in Cleveland, Los Angeles and Minneapolis-St. Paul, to a peak in San Francisco.

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