More than 7,000 nurses strike at two of New York City’s hospitals due to ‘chronic understaffing’

Nurses at two of New York City’s largest hospitals went on strike Monday in a dispute over pay and staffing levels after a weekend of negotiations failed to reach an agreement on a new contract.

The strike involves up to 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and 3,600 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Patients are likely to see interruptions in care, such as emergency room visits and deliveries. The strike formally began at 6 am on Monday.

The New York State Nurses Association, which represents the workers, said the group was forced to take a drastic step because of chronic staff shortages that leave them seeing too many patients at once.

The nurses don’t want to go on strike. The bosses have pushed us into strike action by refusing to seriously consider our proposals to address the desperate crisis of insecure staff harming our patients,” the union said in a statement late Sunday.

Zach Clapp, a nurse in the Pediatric Cardiac ICU at Mount Sinai Hospital, signs a sign demanding safe staffing during a rally by NYSNA nurses from NY Presbyterian and Mount Sina

Montefiore officials said in a statement Monday, “We remain committed to compassionate and uninterrupted care, recognizing that the union leadership’s decision will create fear and uncertainty in our community.”

The hospital planned to assign non-union managers to cover nursing shifts.

Montefiore and Mount Sinai had been preparing for a strike transferring patients, diverting ambulances to other institutions, postponing non-emergency medical procedures, and arranging temporary staff.

Governor Kathy Hochul urged the union and the hospitals Sunday night to take their dispute to binding arbitration.

Montefiore’s management had said it was willing to let an arbitrator terminate the contract “as a means to reach an equitable result.”

A morning commuter walks past a large group of nurses who went on strike in New York City on Monday.

Strikers display protest banners as they fight for wage increases and better working conditions.

The strike involving thousands of nurses is taking place at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx and at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

The union did not immediately accept the proposal. In a statement, he said Hochul, a Democrat, “should listen to the nursing heroes on the front lines of COVID and respect our federally protected labor and collective bargaining rights.”

Montefiore and Mount Sinai are the latest in a group of hospitals with union contracts that expired simultaneously. The Nurses Association had initially warned that it would attack all of them at once, a potential calamity even in a city with as many hospitals as New York.

But one by one, the other hospitals reached agreements with the union as the deadline approached.

Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital ratified an agreement Saturday that will give them raises of 7%, 6% and 5% over the next three years, in addition to increasing staffing levels. That agreement, which covers 4,000 nurses, has been seen as a template for negotiations with other hospital systems.

Nurses at two facilities in the Mount Sinai system also tentatively agreed to contracts Sunday. But negotiations continued at the system’s flagship hospital on Manhattan’s East Side.

Mount Sinai’s administration said in a statement that the union’s focus on staff-to-patient ratios “ignores the progress we’ve made in attracting and hiring more new nurses, despite the global shortage of healthcare workers that is affecting to hospitals across the country. ‘

Nurses protest outside Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where complaints of understaffing have persisted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic