New York Nurses Strike After Failed Contract Negotiations
Nearly 15,000 New York Nurses Strike After Failed Contract Negotiations
- Nurses demand fair pay, healthcare, and safe staffing levels, but hospitals plead poverty despite executives' exorbitant pay.
- Politicians and officials support the nurses, criticizing hospitals' prioritization of profits over workers and patient care.
- State of emergency declared as hospitals hire expensive temporary workers rather than meet nurses' reasonable demands.
Nurses at several of New York City’s biggest hospitals have gone on strike after contract negotiations stalled between the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and hospital officials.
According to ABC News, the strike began on Monday morning when nearly 15,000 nurses at Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Montefiore, and NewYork-Presbyterian walked off the job. The nurses are asking for pay increases, better safety protections, full health care coverage, and pensions.
“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, NYSNA’s president, said in a statement released Monday. “Hospital management refuses to address our most important issues — patient and nurse safety.”
The New York Times reports that this is the second strike by New York City nurses in three years. The first strike involved 7,000 nurses from Manhattan’s Mount Sinai, in Manhattan, and the Bronx’s Montefiore. The strike was focused on improving staffing levels, as the nurses had too many patients to treat safely. The NYSA has said that private hospitals have been threatening to roll back the staffing gains and health care benefits obtained through that strike.
“Wealthy hospitals are trying to undo the safe staffing standards we won for our patients when we went on strike three years ago,” Hagans said Saturday. It should come as no surprise that some of the wealthiest private hospitals in New York City are pleading poverty when it comes to paying their nurses.
“Unfortunately, NYSNA decided to move forward with its strike while refusing to move on from its extreme economic demands, which we cannot agree to, but we are ready with 1,400 qualified and specialized nurses — and prepared to continue to provide safe patient care for as long as this strike lasts,” a Mount Sinai spokesperson said in a statement.
From the New York Times:
Hospitals are expecting lean years ahead, as many New Yorkers lose health insurance and billions of dollars in federal health care funding to the state start to dry up, the result of the domestic policy law President Trump signed in July.
“The health care system is under siege financially,” Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, said. “The demands of the union are so outrageous” that there was no way hospitals could give in to them, he said.
Lucia Lee, a spokeswoman for Mount Sinai, said that nurses at the hospital make on average $162,000 — and that the union’s salary demands would increase that to $275,000 over three years. At Montefiore, the union’s demands would eventually lift the nurses’ average base salary from about $165,000 to $220,000, according to figures provided by the hospital.
Officials with the New York State Nurses Association disputed the hospital’s claims. Union officials said that Mount Sinai and the other hospitals were offering only about $4,500 more per nurse, while declining to fund health care benefits to the same extent as before.
“While NewYork-Presbyterian, Montefiore and Mount Sinai — three of New York City’s wealthiest private hospitals — are claiming they can’t afford to settle a fair union contract that keeps nurses and patients safe, they likely have plenty of cash on hand to use to fight their own workers,” Ms. Hagans, the union president, said.
Hagans isn’t remotely off-base with that assessment. Officials at the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group, revealed that NewYork-Presbyterian spent $60 million to hire contingency nurses in preparation for the strike. I don’t know about you, but spending $60 million to argue against paying your workers is kind of a bad look in my opinion.
Several politicians and officials in New York have come out in support of the nurses. “There is no shortage of wealth in the health care industry,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.
“The CEO of Montefiore made more than $16 million last year. The CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian made $26 million. But too many nurses can’t make ends meet.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James has also come out in support of the striking nurses.
“As our state faces a historic flu surge, our communities are counting on New York’s hospitals for high-quality, reliable frontline care,” James said. “Meanwhile, hospital management is threatening nurses’ health benefits, rolling back hard-won staffing protections, and doing too little to address workplace violence. I am proud to stand with New York’s nurses in calling on hospitals throughout this city to put patients over profits and ensure safe workplaces for our frontline health care workers.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency on Friday in anticipation of the strike and has urged both parties to remain at the negotiating table. “I’m strongly encouraging everyone to stay at the table, both sides, management and the nurses, until this is resolved,” Hochul said.
It’s insane that the CEO’s of these hospitals are straight-up multimillionaires but are arguing with a straight face that they don’t have the money to pay their workers. Their wealth is built on the backs of the nurses who put their health and safety on the line every day. The least they can do is pay them a decent wage, provide them with solid health care, and ensure that the hospitals have reasonable staffing levels. If you pay people what they’re worth, they won’t go on strike.
It’s crazy how that works.
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Nearly 15,000 New York Nurses Strike After Failed Contract Negotiations was originally published on newsone.com