Several leading hospitals in New York City face a critical labor shortage as nearly 15,000 union nurses went on strike on Monday. The work stoppage, which targets Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Montefiore and New York-Presbyterian, began when negotiations failed to reach agreement on a new contract.
“Unfortunately, greedy hospital executives have decided to put profits above safe patient care and force nurses out on strike when we would rather be at the bedsides of our patients,” Nancy Hagans, president of the New York State Nurses Association, said in a statement. "Hospital management refuses to address our most important issues -- patient and nurse safety. It is shameful that the city’s richest hospitals refuse to continue health care benefits for frontline nurses, refuse to staff safely for our patients and refuse to protect us from workplace violence.”
Months of negotiations with hospital management stalled over issues such as health care benefits, workplace violence protection and staffing levels, according to the union’s strike announcement.
“We have been bargaining for months, but hospitals have not done nearly enough to settle fair contracts that protect patient care,” Hagans said. “Striking is always a last resort; however, nurses will not stop until we win contracts that deliver patient and nurse safety. The future of care in this city is far too important to compromise on our values as nurses.”
Mount Sinai nurses currently earn an average of $162,000 annually, spokesperson Lucia Lee told the New York Times. The union’s salary demands would increase that to $275,000 over three years. At Montefiore, the union’s demands eventually would raise the nurses’ average base salary from about $165,000 to $220,000, according to figures provided by the hospital. Union officials dispute these figures, saying the hospitals are offering raises of only $4,500 while declining to fund health care benefits at the previous level.
The strike comes as members of the health care industry in New York and elsewhere are tightening their belts in advance of looming Medicaid cuts and other economic headwinds.
“The health care system is under siege financially,” said Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, according to the Times. “The demands of the union are so outrageous” that there was no way hospitals could give in to them, he said.
In preparation for a possible strike, hospital executives secured contracts with staffing agencies to provide travel nurses and reserved hotel rooms for them, hospital association officials told the Times. New York-Presbyterian alone spent $60 million preparing for the strike, hiring more than 1,700 contingency nurses, a spokesperson said.
The strike poses an early test for newly inaugurated Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who spoke in support of the striking nurses at a Monday rally.
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