More than 30k nurses, building cleaners may strike by years’ end – am New York. – 11/30/11

Thousands of disgruntled building cleaners and city hospital nurses and are contemplating walking off the job at the end of the year.

That sucks! After the biggest party of the year, there won’t be people to clean up after us, nor cure our hangovers. Now would be a perfect time to get a date who is either a nurse or a house cleaner.

Approximately 10,000 nurses at Montefiore, Mount Sinai, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and New York-Presbyterian hospitals may strike just before Christmas, according to New York State Nurses Association spokesman Bernie Mulligan. Their contract expired months ago and little progress has been made in negotiations, he said, adding that the nurses want more affordable health care, increased staffing levels, and higher wages.

Nurses want more affordable health care? Don’t they get some sort of employee discount or anything?

Bruce McIver, who serves as president of the League of Voluntary Hospitals and is negotiating on behalf of Montefiore and Mount Sinai hospitals, said it’s too early to tell if a strike will happen, but that nurses have to give at least 10 days notice before they strike.

This is amazing! You have to give notice before you go on strike?

“Hospitals would have to make preparations to make sure their patients are covered and that patients are safe,” McIver told amNewYork. “I’m sure they all have plans that they’re working on.”

I’m glad that patient care is still considered in this whole ordeal, but I think they should go back and think about why they got into nursing in the first place. Not many get into it for the paycheck. If that were the case, they should have chose becoming a doctor instead.

In addition, more than 22,000 workers who clean business offices in Gotham — many of them in midtown — are voting Thursday to strike as soon as the New Years’ Eve ball marks midnight in Times Square, when their contract expires. They oppose a new contract that calls for a two-tier system that would pay new employees less, saying it could lead to employers choosing the cheaper workers in the future.

People who accept low pay don’t do it as a long term solution. Low pay is beneficial for everyone. It gives the new employee an incentive to work hard to earn more money. And it saves the employer money on those who just slack off and don’t get the job done. Besides, many employees will usually only stay in a low-paying job until a higher-paying job shows up. Meaning, the low-paying job field is short-term/high-turnover.

A strike “would likely disrupt business and cause major inconveniences to tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” said their union president, Mike Fishman, in a statement.

You mean that instead of the streets smelling like trash, the offices will? I have an idea: how about instead of trashing the place in hopes that the cleaning crew would take care of it, that we just take care of it ourselves? Yes, it’s nice to have our mothers clean up after us, but we are grown-ass adults who should have been taught not to trash the place we work in.

The Real Estate Board of Labor Relations counters that the workers are the highest paid in the country, and that the real estate industry isn’t as strong as it was in 2007, when their last contract was negotiated.

This may be true, but I think this should be more reason for the office workers to clean up their own messes. If they are slower, then they aren’t as busy to not pick up their own messes. Or they could strum up some business by not charging a 15% annual rent on a broker fee. It’s New York. Rent is too damn high that you should be able to make a killing on a 2% commission.