Over 7,000 Unionized Nurses Strike at Two NYC Hospitals — Patients Transferred, Ambulances Diverted

More than 7,000 unionized nurses walked off the job Monday at two of New York City’s largest hospitals after negotiations stalled over the weekend.

Approximately 3,600 nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and 3,500 at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx are involved in the strike, the Associated Press reported.

The strike has forced the two private nonprofit hospitals to adjust their services, including diverting ambulances, postponing nonemergency surgeries,  transferring patients, bringing in temporary staff, and assigning managers with nursing experience to cover for the missing workers.

While other hospitals in the city were able to come to agreements before the deadline on Sunday, Mount Sinai and Montefiore were unable to reach deals with the New York State Nurses Association, the union which represents the workers.

The union says it is striking because of understaffed wards that have caused nurses on duty to care for too many patients and for “fair contracts.”

“Nurses don’t want to strike. Bosses have pushed us to strike by refusing to seriously consider our proposals to address the desperate crisis of unsafe staffing that harms our patients,” the New York State Nurses Association said in a statement Sunday.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) had called for binding arbitration between the union and the two hospitals “so that all parties can swiftly reach a resolution.”

However, the New York State Nurses Association was not satisfied with Hochul’s answer.

“We call on Gov. Hochul to join us in putting patients over profits and to enforce existing nurse staffing laws,” the union said. “Gov. Hochul should listen to frontline COVID nurse heroes and respect our federally-protected labor and collective bargaining rights.”

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A Mount Sinai spokesman countered the union’s talking point regarding staffing shortages, noting that there is a “global shortage of healthcare workers that is impacting hospitals across the country” and that they are ignoring they have been working to hire more nurses, the Daily Mail reported.

Furthermore, the Mount Sinai spokesman said that nurses at the hospital were offered the “exact wage agreement” that was accepted by the two other hospitals in the system before Sunday’s deadline, including at Morningside/West and the East Side campus.

Montefiore hospital also recently released a statement regarding its negotiating position with the nurses’ union:

Despite Montefiore’s offer of a 19.1% compounded wage increase—the same offer agreed to at the wealthiest of our peer institutions—and a commitment to create over 170 new nursing positions, and despite a call from Governor Hochul for arbitration, The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) leadership has decided to walk away from their patients.

All hospitals that reached a deal with the union before the Sunday deadline agreed to raises of over seven percent, six percent, and five percent over the next three years, according to the Associated Press.

You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.