7,000 nurses strike at 2 New York City hospitals
More than 7,000 nurses at two major New York hospital systems walked off the job early Monday after talks broke down overnight, digging in on staffing and workloads they contend have overwhelmed their ranks during the pandemic and beyond.
Last-minute talks to avoid a work stoppage at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx collapsed after union negotiators walked out shortly after 1 a.m., said Lucia Lee, a Mount Sinai spokeswoman. The New York State Nurses Association had rejected an earlier proposal by New York Governor Kathy Hochul to take this dispute to binding arbitration.
Representatives from both hospitals said the union rejected a nearly 20 percent wage increase that nurses at peer institutions accepted in earlier bargaining talks.
In a statement, New York Mayor Eric Adams urged all parties to "remain at the bargaining table for however long it takes to reach a voluntary agreement."
The strike comes as the Northeast is bracing for a potential wave of COVID-19 cases brought by the XBB.1.5 variant, an offshoot of the omicron variant that set off a spike in infections after the 2021-22 holiday season. Infections from the new variant have swelled from barely 2 percent of US cases at the start of December to more than 27 percent the first week of January, according to estimates by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 70 percent of cases in the Northeast are believed to be XBB.1.5. In New York, COVID-19-related hospitalizations increased 4 percent in the past week, according to the CDC. Deaths rose 27 percent in the past day.
Nursing unions across the country have pushed for more staffing since the pandemic took hold in 2020, citing burnout they contend has hindered patient care and placed health care professionals in harm’s way.
New York nurses reached agreements with seven other hospitals around a common bargaining framework. They will get close to a 20 percent salary increase over three years, and the hospitals agreed to higher staffing standards.
"Since [New York City] nurses started negotiating our contracts four months ago, we have said our number one issue is the crisis of chronic understaffing that harms patient care," New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans told reporters Friday. "Safe staffing is about having enough nurses to deliver safe, quality care to every patient. It is the issue that our employers have ignored, made excuses about, and fought against us on."
The nurses decided to "walk away from the bedsides of the patients," Montefiore said in a statement, a move that "will spark fear and uncertainty across our community."
"Our first priority is the safety of our patients. We’re prepared to minimize disruption, and we encourage Mount Sinai nurses to continue providing the worldclass care they’re known for, in spite of NYSNA’s strike," Lee, the Mount Sinai spokeswoman, said in a statement.
In a Twitter post, the union said that patients going to either hospital system are "NOT crossing our strike line." It invited patients to join demonstrations after receiving care.