All healthcare workers, chief among them the nurses and doctors, have the right to strike. Sometimes it's even necessary to do so, considering that only particularly prolonged and painful strikes have ever spurred Israeli governments to improve working conditions and salaries for medical and hospice staff. Without such strikes, the Finance and Health ministries would stall, in perpetuity, negotiating with healthcare workers. It's also in the entire public's interest that healthcare workers earn fair wages and that we have enough doctors and nurses to provide us with quality care.
However, in the health and medical professions, a strike always harms those who are sick and causes them considerable hardship. Sometimes it can even result in severe and irreversible health complications. Therefore, medical and hospice workers must only strike as the very last option, when all other recourse has failed and after significant efforts to wage a public campaign and negotiate honestly have been made. This point is so fundamentally critical that some scholars of medical ethics believe such a strike is never a moral act.
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All of this, meanwhile, is completely irrespective of the coronavirus pandemic currently menacing the planet with medical and healthcare challenges the world hasn't seen in 100 years and is struggling to overcome. It should be noted that the strike does not include epidemiological research and that the National Association of Nurses has ordered this work be conducted "immediately and without delay" even during the strike. But the National Association of Nurses is being too light and hasty on the trigger finger, and not for the first time. At this stage, the strike is immoral and cannot be allowed to happen.
National Association of Nurses Chairwoman Ilana Cohen warned ahead of the strike: "The Finance Ministry isn't doing enough to prioritize the welfare of the nation's healthcare workers, and to our regret we have no choice but to take organizational steps, before we have to contend with immoral and inhumane decisions of who to treat and who not to treat."
"The nurses are collapsing, the system is crashing. The strike is not an empty threat," she said.
Ilana Cohen has already learned, apparently, that striking is the only tool with which to extract any concessions of significance from the state on behalf of the nurses and for the sake of better healthcare for us all – whether in normal times or during a crippling pandemic.
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