Around 2,000 health care workers at South Buffalo Mercy Hospital are on strike after weeks of negotiations left them without a deal. The workers’ own health care costs are at issue, as are staffing ratios to ensure the best care of patients. There’s an important point made in the tweets below:

They’re not the only health care workers currently striking. Nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, have been on strike for more than 200 days.

“They think that women will take it on the chin no matter what,” Marie Ritacco told The Lily’s Abigail Higgins. “We are committed to our profession and to our patients, but the pandemic has proven to us that if we do not stand up for ourselves and our patients, no one is going to do that for us.”

The Saint Vincent nurses are pointing a finger at for-profit management of the hospital, saying their working conditions and the care they were able to give their patients have deteriorated since for-profit companies took over.

Whatever the system of management, it’s grotesque that, in the middle of a pandemic, health care workers are having to strike for their own pay and benefits and for the staffing ratios they need to keep patients safe.