Listen: Healthcare Workers on Strike/Garment Workers in Crisis

A delegation from the GSBI union in Indonesia met this week at the Triangle Factory Fire memorial in NYC to help put a spotlight on the exploitation of garment workers worldwide.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of WBAI’s “What’s Going On?” we get a regional update from Shameka Burnette-Mathews from 1199SEIU about the union's strike at five for-profit nursing homes in western New York. We also speak to Debbie White, president of NJ's HPAE, which represents 14,000 nurses and healthcare workers, about the strike vote taken by her members at Southern Ocean Medical Center, which is part of the massive Hackensack Meridian Health hospital chain.

White says safe staffing is a key sticking point with the chain that paid its CEO  over $7.1 million in 2023.

In the second half of the show, Professor MaryAnn Trasciatti, director of Labor Studies at Hofstra University and president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, reflects on the central role women play in the healthcare union movement.  She introduces Leni Oktira Sari, a garment worker who makes Nike shoes and is a member of the GSBI union in Indonesia. Sari is part of a delegation visiting the United States to raise awareness about the exploitation of garment workers around the world. 

Trasciatti met the NIKE delegation at the site of the Triangle Fire tragedy that in 1911 claimed the lives of 146 mostly young immigrant women garment workers who couldn't escape the factory because the anti-union owners had locked the doors.

Listen to the entire show below: