July 8, Boston, MA— Today, 4000 Mass General Brigham nurses in a one-day strike attacked corporate greed, demanding hiring more nurses for patient safety, and decent pay raises and benefits. After over six months in which the Mass General Brigham (MGB) bosses refused to negotiate, the nurses walked out. MGB then locked out the nurses for another four days. This is the largest nursing strike in Massachusetts history.

Capitalism can’t provide good healthcare

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were there at the start of the strike. We’ve passed out 500 leaflets stating “Capitalism Destroys Health Care’”attacking deportations, and calling for the real solution to capitalist health care, communist revolution. The strikers welcomed us and agreed with our headline. Many told us they liked everything in the leaflet.

The hospital bosses, who pay themselves millions of dollars a year, have offered a zero percent cost-of-living increase, and have raised the nurses’ costs for their own medical care. But they paid $111 million for strikebreakers. These bosses use the hospital as a money-making machine.

An important issue is the status of immigrant nurses, who are widely super-exploited in healthcare. We say they must be protected and defended.

As the strike started at 7 am, thousands of nurses militantly picketed and marched noisily at the hospital entrance. Nurses coming off the night shift told us that some were forced to stay at work, because a patient in crisis needed a ventilator, and the scab replacement nurses didn’t know how to do that; $111 million for incompetent replacements! Mass General, like a corporate octopus, has been buying up hospitals and medical practices, and is running them into the ground. A so-called “not-for-profit” hospital is endangering patient care with cutbacks. Mass General nurses are not unionized; Brigham nurses are unionized. Strikers believe that the “MGB” is trying to break their union.

All working people should support these nurses; they are striking for our safety and their own lives. But winning this strike is not enough. The declining U.S. empire is paying trillions of dollars for murderous wars, destruction and genocide, but cannot provide decent health care for workers. U.S. cuts in vital programs from vaccinations, and funds to stop epidemics across the world, show the true nature of capitalism. Like all capitalists in crisis, they are opting for imperialist war to protect their profits.

Progressive Labor Party fights for  a system where profit is abolished, racism and sexism are outlawed, and the wealth of society and the decision-making power is shared by all. Strikes are opportunities to build the communist movement because workers get a taste of their own power. Communism will always be despised by the bosses and the ruling class, because they know it will end their stranglehold on power.