In early November, medical residents and fellows at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx announced that they were seeking to unionize with the Service Employees International Union Committee of Interns and Residents (SEIU CIR). Montefiore is a safety-net hospital, serving lower-income residents of the Bronx; it is also one of the country’s premier training hospitals for new doctors. If the organizing drive is successful, the Montefiore bargaining unit will represent over one thousand doctors.

The doctors who are attempting to unionize Montefiore complain of dangerous overwork and understaffing that is undermining patient care; the hospital has refused to voluntarily recognize the union. Jacobin’s Sara Wexler interviewed Montefiore family medicine resident Noa Nessim and psychiatry resident Aubrey Vinh on Friday, November 18, about why doctors are pushing for unionization and what organizing efforts have been like so far.