More than 7,000 nurses stage walkout at two New York City hospitals after wage negotiations fail

Around 7,000 nurses staged a walk-out at two main New York City hospitals around 6 am (local time) on Monday after negotiation talks to avert a strike failed overnight.

Tentative deals were finalised in a few hospitals, which included new agreements reached on Sunday evening. However, the officials failed to finalise talks at Mount Sinai hospital located in Manhattan and at the Montefiore Medical Centre in the Bronx.

“After bargaining late into the night at Montefiore and Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday, no tentative agreements were reached. Today, more than 7,000 nurses at two hospitals are on strike for fair contracts that improve patient care,” said the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), in a statement, on Monday.

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On Monday morning, the two hospitals confirmed that they failed to reach an agreement.

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“NYSNA leadership walked out of negotiations shortly after 1 am ET, refusing to accept the exact same 19.1 per cent increased wage offer agreed to by eight other hospitals, including two other Mount Sinai Health System campuses, and disregarding the governor’s solution to avoid a strike,” said Lucia Lee, Mount Sinai's spokesperson, in a statement to CNN.

Montefiore Medical Centre called it “a sad day for New York City.”

“Despite Montefiore’s offer of a 19.1 per cent 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 … NYSNA’s leadership has decided to walk away from the bedsides of their patients,” said the medical centre in its statement.

Tentative agreements

The nurses went on strike after the union reached tentative agreements with other two hospitals, Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West, on Sunday.

"Today, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside reached a settlement, subject to ratification, with NYSNA union leadership and NYSNA has rescinded its strike notice at those sites. This agreement includes the identical 19.1 per cent wage increases in agreements that have already been accepted by six other hospitals, and officially ratified by NewYork-Presbyterian and Maimonides,” said NYSNA in a statement.

The demand of the union

Although the union finalised the tentative agreement on the same raises that other hospitals offered, it failed to enter an agreement with Montefiore and Mount Sinai because it said the main issue is nurses are overworked and feeling burnout.

In a press conference on Sunday, NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said, “The No. 1 issue is the crisis of understaffing. We need management to come to the table and provide better staffing.”

Montefiore's emergency room, where 3,476 members of the union work “is often so overcrowded that patients are admitted in beds in a hallway instead of hospital rooms,” said Hagans.
“We are here to negotiate in good faith, to make sure that the nurses have enough resources to care for the patients. It's not up to the nurses. It's up to the bosses to sit there and come up with a fair contract for so our nurses could continue to care for our patients," Hagans said in Sunday's press conference,” he added.

Hagans said that there are 760 nursing vacancies in Montefiore, adding that “too often one nurse in the emergency department is responsible for 20 patients instead of the standard of three patients”.

The union insisted that they are holding a strike to improve the quality of patient care.

“Going into the hospital to get the care you need is NOT crossing our strike line. Patients should seek hospital care immediately if they need it. We would rather be the ones providing that care, but our bosses have pushed us to be out here instead,” the union said in the statement.

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Hospitals prepare for strike

Preparations have been made by the hospitals to face the strike of the nurses union after they gave notice of their plan 10 days earlier.

The hospitals, hit by the strike, have planned to hire temporary “travelling” nurses and have started transferring patients.

A notice was released by Montefiore asking nurses how they should quit the union and stay in their jobs if they wish to continue taking care of their patients.

Mount Sinai transferred the infants, admitted to their hospital, in the neonatal intensive care unit. Meanwhile, hospitals that are likely to face a strike have taken steps to postpone a few elective procedures.

(With inputs from agencies)