Nearly 15,000 nurses at several of New York City’s major hospitals went on strike on Monday over pay, as well as staffing and security issues.
The strike “could be one of the biggest labor showdowns in the city’s health care industry in decades,” the New York Times reported. A union representing nurses said the strike is designed to pressure hospitals to uphold staffing ratios to make sure nurses are not overloaded with patients, and to ensure higher wages and more security at facilities to combat violent incidents and shootings.
The strike is impacting some of the Big Apple’s top private medical institutions, including New York Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center, and the main campus of Mount Sinai Hospital, as well as two other large hospitals within the Mount Sinai system, according to the report.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed an executive order on Friday declaring that the strike will likely “impact the availability and delivery of care, threatening public health,” and that a “disaster is imminent.”
Hospital executives have been anticipating the strike for weeks and have prepared to keep the facilities running for the duration, contracting with agencies to supply travel nurses, officials at the trade group Greater New York Hospital Association said, per the report.
Elisabeth R. Wynn, an executive vice president at the hospital association, said some hospitals have canceled scheduled surgeries and expedited discharges over the weekend to decrease the number of patients in case of a strike. The hospitals have also planned the transfer of infants from neonatal intensive care units to other hospitals, she said.
New York’s Department of Health told other hospitals not impacted by the strike to be prepared to accept patients from medical centers with staff participating in the strike.
The current strike follows a strike of approximately 7,000 nurses at Mount Sinai and Montefiore three years ago over chronic understaffing, according to the report. That strike lasted three days and ended after hospitals agreed to hire more nurses and set minimum staffing requirements with tight enforcement.
Nurses who are on strike now say hospitals are trying to backpedal those victories from three years ago.
“Wealthy hospitals are trying to undo the safe staffing standards we won for our patients when we went on strike three years ago,” said Nancy Hagans, the president of the New York State Nurses Association union.
Nurses also secured raises three years ago, increasing minimum pay by nearly 20 percent over three years and increasing starting pay to well over $100,000, according to the report.
The Times report notes that dynamics “could turn out to be different,” than before when hospitals were still reeling from the pandemic. Hospitals now are anticipating “lean years ahead,” according to the report.
“The health care system is under siege financially,” said Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association. “The demands of the union are so outrageous that there is no way they can concede to what the union is asking for.”
Lucia Lee, a spokeswoman for Mount Sinai, told the publication that nurses at the hospital make an average of $162,000, and that the union’s new salary demands would raise that to $275,000 over three years.
New York State Nurses Association officials said Mount Sinai and other hospitals have only agreed to offer $4,500 more a year, according to the report. Union officials point to the huge salaries of top hospital executives — for example, Dr. Steven Corwin, head of NewYork-Presbyterian, received more than $26 million in 2024, which included some retirement funds and bonuses deferred from previous years, the report states, citing a public filing. The hospital’s spokeswoman reportedly declined to comment on his salary.
“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,” Hagans said, “they likely have plenty of cash on hand to use to fight their own workers.”
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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