When a state law went into effect that mandated New York’s hospitals form clinical staffing committees, health care union leaders cheered because they saw the legislation as a major key to improving workplace conditions that eroded during the Covid-19 pandemic and forced more caregivers to exit the profession.
Now, unions want to see the state enforce that law.
Communications Workers of America District 1 on Thursday submitted thousands of clinical staffing plan violations to the state Health Department. The union said its submission includes more than 7,800 unresolved staffing complaints from this year across several hospitals, including Kaleida Health’s Buffalo General Medical Center and Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and Catholic Health System’s hospitals.
The CWA said more than 5,300 of the unresolved staffing complaints came at Kaleida’s hospitals and occurred across intensive care units, medical-surgical floors and telemetry units. They often involved workers taking care of more patients than agreed upon in set staffing ratios, leading to missed breaks and longer patient wait times.
While the union named specific hospitals – facilities where the CWA has large membership bases – labor leaders sought to show that staffing remains a pervasive problem in hospitals across the state despite the implementation of the law that created clinical staffing committees.
“Despite the best efforts of our committee members to address violations of the law, when hospitals fail to staff according to agreed upon plans, and put patients’ lives on the line, we have no choice but to get the state involved,” CWA Local 1168 President Cori Gambini said.
“Patients and health care workers deserve robust enforcement by the Department of Health and New York State to ensure improved staffing in health care facilities,” she said. “This is about saving lives and taking steps to stabilize the health care workforce which is in urgent crisis.”
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