Bonnie Castillo, RN and Executive Director of National Nurses United (NNU) – the nation’s largest union of registered nurses – issued the following statement in support of the Writers Guild of America strike:

“National Nurses United and our affiliates, including California Nurses Association, are proud to stand in solidarity with the striking members of Writers Guild of America. Their talent and creativity help tell important stories about the human condition and, for countless nurses, give us the enrichment, levity, and humor we need after long hours caring for our patients. When Hollywood and Silicon Valley studios invest millions into producing a certain film or series, it is inexcusable for writers to not be paid sufficiently to put food on the table, pay their rent, or support their families.

“Even though we are in different industries, nurses’ and writers’ fights could not be more connected. Nurses know what it’s like to be on the strike lines and to confront our greedy, out-of-touch employers, who couldn’t do our job if they tried but still get paid millions of dollars. They are constantly scheming up new ways of compensating us less for more work, or eliminating our roles entirely.

“At the structural level, nurses and writers are fighting for our professions to exist as economically viable, full-time jobs done by humans. If our industries’ executives and Wall Street have their way, our professions – and many others facing the same threats – will soon turn from stable, middle-class careers into unstable, on-demand, ‘gig work’ increasingly outsourced to AI software. Like the striking writers, nurses are confronting AI’s existential threat to our scope of work, corporate consolidation and financialization that prioritizes growth and profit at the expense of quality, and diminishing opportunities for training and development.

“Megacorporations want us to believe these changes in our economy are inevitable, but the writers are demonstrating that workers can flip the script. The stakes are enormous. Together, union workers across industries can win an economy that puts people’s livelihoods over corporate greed and protects the humanity at the heart of our professions.”

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with nearly 225,000 members nationwide.