Nursing the Nation

Our solidarity and courage mean everything on the road ahead

By Bonnie Castillo, RN

National Nurse magazine - Oct | Nov | Dec 2024 Issue

2024 has been a year for the books. With some truly epic shows of nurse power, including RNs at 17 HCA facilities in six states settling new contracts, and RNs at New Orleans’ University Medical Center making U.S. history by striking for a fair first contract, we’ve continued to put the wealthiest, greediest corporations on notice. We’ve reminded our employers again and again that union nurses will always fight in unbreakable solidarity to lift people above profit. And we’re not going to stop now.

2024 also culminated in an extremely consequential election, and regardless of how you voted, we nurses know that our ongoing mission to center care in society isn’t partisan — and can't be contained in an election cycle. Our drive to achieve healthier communities begins in the calling we all have as healers, and it does not end. Ever. Union nurses have never waited for someone to swoop in to save our patients or our profession. No matter who is in the White House, we have always actively united around an essential truth: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

So as the nation experiences a shift change between presidential administrations, what are union nurses going to do? We’re going to stand strong together, beyond party lines, in the face of any efforts to divide us, and keep corporate interests on notice. We are experts at roadblocking corporate greed in our workplaces, and on the path ahead, we’re going to link arms tighter than ever before to protect our right to organize and bargain collectively for safe patient care conditions. We’re going to channel the same nurse power that won strong contracts in 2024 into wins for tens of thousands of nurses across the country whose contracts are up in 2025. National Nurses United has grown immensely in numbers and power in recent years, even throughout the deadliest pandemic in a lifetime, and if anyone tries to stop our movement for safe patient care now, they’re going to have to come through us.

I’m not going to sugarcoat the challenges we face on the path forward, as we can see the coming administration forming a circle of billionaire advisors. But we can take courage from our long track record of challenging people who put profits above patients and nurses. For decades, they have tried to break our solidarity in an effort to weaken our ability to fight back. Every single day, they try to demean who we are and what we do. Yet, history has shown us that when we stand together and don’t back down, even the nation’s richest CEOs are no match for the nation’s most compassionate and dedicated nurses.

As a workforce uniquely concerned with ensuring our patients’ everyday lives are just, healthy, and safe, union nurses have an extremely powerful voice to stand up for the working class. We’re going to use it, in our facilities, in our communities, in the halls of power, and in the media. The vow we make to help and heal all people is something nurses hold incredibly sacred, so we are going to continue to stand up to the threats currently faced by our LGBTQ+ patients, our immigrant patients, and by women who are fighting in many states to receive lifesaving reproductive care.

At a time when working people are suffering immensely, crushed under the weight of everything from extreme economic injustice  to a drastic rise in bigotry and hate, we are going to remind our patients that they have 225,000 RN advocates all across the country. In January and beyond, we are going to come together stronger than ever before to let our patients who are scared, who are struggling, who are hurt and sick and feeling very little hope know, “We have your back.”

And we are going to remind our fellow nurses of that, too. We are here for one another. At the end of the day, we are all fighting the same fight to protect our patients and our profession. Without our solidarity, our employers — the corporations and billionaires — will win. We won’t let them.

As I’ve said before, fighting to center care is a radical act in a society that worships profit. Union RNs have always been our patients’ most trusted advocates, so we are going to keep on caring fiercely, healing with every ounce of our being, growing our solidarity, linking arms with the entire labor movement and all working people, until nurses’ values drive this nation. For the next four years and beyond, we’re going to show people across the United States what a healthier, more caring way forward looks like — because union nurses are already living it. 

Bonnie Castillo, RN is executive director of National Nurses United.