NYSNA Reaches Tentative Agreement at 3 Hospitals; 10K Nurses at 5 Hospitals Still Set to Strike on Monday
This week, NYSNA announced that nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Maimonides Medical Center and Richmond University Medical Center have reached tentative agreements that include improvements in safe staffing and wages. Now nurses will vote on whether to ratify their new contracts. Meanwhile, negotiations and plans to go on strike beginning on January 9th continue for 10,000 nurses at 5 remaining hospitals in New York City, including BronxCare Health System, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Montefiore Bronx, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Mount Sinai Morningside and West.
"NYC’s private sector hospitals are run more like private equity firms than the nonprofits they’re meant to be,” writes Matt Allen, an RN at Mount Sinai and member of NYSNA in an OpEd published yesterday in the NY Daily News. “They lavish their executives with six- and seven-figure salaries and bonuses, they jack up fees for services, and they prioritize their bottom line above patient care. Hospital executives seem to forget that their mission is to provide quality care to the community. Nurses are here to remind them."
RNs have been speaking out and sounding the alarm about the short-staffing crisis puts patients at risk, especially during a tripledemic of COVID, RSV and flu. Nurses say hospitals aren’t doing enough to keep caregivers at the bedside, and instead of working with COVID nurse heroes, in some cases, are even threatening to cut their healthcare benefits.
Can you join the nurses in solidarity on their picket lines? They'll be on the lines Monday, January 9th through Saturday, January 14 and are asking supporters to join between 10am-2pm.
Picket lines will be at:
- Mount Sinai Hospital - 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, Madison Ave & 100th St, New York, NY 10029
- Mount Sinai Morningside - 1111 Amsterdam Avenue & 114th St, New York, NY 10025
- Mount Sinai West - 1000 10th Ave & 58th St, New York, NY 10019
- Montefiore Moses - 111 E 210th St, The Bronx, NY 10467
- Montefiore Weiler - 1825 Eastchester Rd, The Bronx, NY 10461
- BronxCare Hospital Center - 1650 Grand Concourse, The Bronx, NY 10457
Click here to read an open letter signed by 27 labor orgs throughout NYC (including the CLC) urging local hospitals to agree to fair contract, and follow the Nurses on Twitter.