Thousands of nurses in New York went on strike: they demand less work and more money

Hundreds of striking nurses and their supporters lined both sides of Madison Avenue in front of Mount Sinai Hospital on January 9. They waved signs demanding an employment contract that would require more nurses at the patient's bedside, reports New York Times.

Nurses, members of the New York State Nurses Association, went on strike at 6 a.m. Monday after talks with Mount Sinai officials broke down. Nurses also went on strike at three campuses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx over similar pay and staffing issues. And the nurses of eight other city hospitals were able to conclude preliminary contracts and did not go on strike.

Monday's strike, which was attended by more than 7000 nurses, was the largest nurses' strike in New York in decades. It comes as nurses are increasingly resorting to strike action as a work strategy, both at home and abroad. Nurses stand their ground to improve working conditions for themselves and their patients.

“We are not here for the paycheck. We are here because we want patient safety,” said Lorena Vivas, who has been a nurse for 19 years.

Vivas joined her fellow nurses, union leaders and local elected officials on the picket line in front of Mount Sinai Hospital. They donned bright red hats and scarves and shouted to the sound of sirens and applause. Letitia James, the state's attorney general, and Mark Levin, the president of the Manhattan borough, were among the officials who stood with the strikers.

Vivas said she often has to care for three or four patients in intensive care instead of one or two. “This was happening even before the pandemic,” she added. “And the pandemic just revealed all that.”

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The problem of shortage of staff in hospitals has been around for many years.

Nurses are leaving emergency rooms and inpatient wards in search of higher paying jobs as temporary nurses. Or less strenuous outpatient work. The Covid pandemic, which is now accompanied by a surge in winter hospitalizations of patients with influenza and SARS, has exacerbated the burden.

At Mount Sinai, union leaders say emergency room nurses can attend to up to 18 patients at a time. In Montefiore, patients are kept in the corridors so often that management has installed televisions there. Nurses will only return if the hospital agrees to improve working conditions, they said.

The hospital management says it is doing everything possible in the face of a shortage of nurses in the country.

“It is impossible to overestimate the difficulties associated with hiring talented medical personnel, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic,” said Lucia Li. This is how a Mount Sinai spokesman explains the reasons for the hundreds of vacancies. She said the hospital has been implementing "unprecedented recruitment strategies" in recent years.

When it became clear this week that a strike was likely, Mount Sinai and Montefiore rushed to bring in temporary staff to keep the job going. And even forced the doctors to get to work to fill the gaps in the work of nurses. The Montefiore Medical Center said that the union's leadership "decided to limit patient care" despite management's offer to raise wages by 19,1% and create more than 170 new nursing positions.

“We remain committed to uninterrupted care, recognizing that the union's leadership's decision will cause fear and uncertainty in our community,” the statement said.

Judy Sheridan-Gonzales, a nurse on the Montefiore negotiating committee, said hospital officials called nurses to the negotiating table on Monday afternoon after seeing hundreds of nurses gathered outside the main campus on Monday morning.

Hospital overcrowding and shortage of staff

"It is not safe. How can a nurse safely monitor 20 patients in the emergency room? Joneira Dillon-Floriant said. “We are humans, we are not machines.”

Negotiations have been going on for four months, Sheridan-Gonzalez said. But the move toward union demands for mandatory staffing and hiring bonuses to compete with higher wages at nearby NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital has only happened in the past few days.

“I don't think they thought we were going out,” she said.

On Sunday evening, Gov. Kathy Hokul called for binding arbitration "so that all parties can quickly come to a decision." Representatives from both hospitals said they would welcome arbitration. And expressed the hope that the nurses' union would agree and postpone the strike deadline. But the representatives of the trade union did not accept the proposal.

“Governor Hokul needs to listen to the nurses. And respect our federally protected labor and collective rights,” the union said in a statement.

The pandemic has left some healthcare workers with a deep distrust of leadership

In New York, many of the nurses and doctors who worked during the first wave of the pandemic have not forgotten the conditions when Covid first swept through the city in early 2020 and overwhelmed hospitals with an influx of patients, killing more than 22 people. In the UK last month, nurses went on strike for the first time in the country's 000-year history of the National Health Service.

Nancy Hagans, president of the New York State Nursing Association, says the inability of hospitals to hire new nurses has left hundreds of unfilled vacancies. Including over 700 vacancies in Montefiore and 500 in Mount Sinai.

“Our #1 problem is the staffing crisis,” she said. “This is the problem our employers are ignoring.”

On December 31, contracts for nurses at a dozen private hospitals in the city expired. The union sanctioned a strike in some of them and sent a 10-day notice to the hospitals. On Sunday, two other Manhattan hospitals, both operated by Mount Sinai Health System - Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West, located on the West Side - reached a tentative agreement with the union that included a 19,1% pay increase over three years.

Hospital officials said they have made the same offer, including an additional $51 per nurse and $000 in medical bills for three years, to nurses at Mount Sinai Fifth Avenue Hospital.

Union officials, however, said there were still disputes over seniority pay on Mount Sinai's main campus. And that nurses there tend to earn less than the other two Mount Sinai campuses.

Matt Allen, a birth nurse on the union negotiating team in Mount Sinai, said the main stumbling block is establishing a mandatory relationship between nurses and patients. There are now staffing tables that detail how many patients each nurse should serve. But they are not followed on a regular basis.

A new state law requires hospitals and nursing homes to maintain a safe staffing ratio. But the pandemic has delayed it.

On Monday, Attorney General James urged the state Department of Health to enforce the law in her speech at the Mount Sinai strike.

“They don't want to put patients in danger,” James said of the nurses. "They want to improve safety at this hospital and other hospitals, not just in the city, but throughout the state."

The union also recently entered into preliminary agreements with the University of Richmond Medical Center, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, BronxCare and Brooklyn Hospital Center, and ratified agreements at NewYork-Presbyterian and Maimonides Medical Center. Negotiations are ongoing with Interfaith Medical Center, Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, all in Brooklyn.

In recent days, hospitals have been hastily preparing for the upcoming strike. Including discharged all patients who could only be discharged. They also brought in replacement nurses, postponed many elective surgeries, and sent ambulances to other hospitals.

Mount Sinai has begun transferring some vulnerable patients, including fragile newborns in neonatal intensive care units, to other hospitals and has helped cancer patients find alternative places of care.

Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement Sunday night that the city is communicating with hospital systems. But he noted that the work of hospitals in some areas of the city is likely to be difficult.