Strike Deadline Nears At Two NYC Hospitals; Governor Calls For Arbitration

By Steve Wishnia

With less than seven hours to go before the strike deadline of 6 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 9, more than 7,000 nurses at two of New York City’s largest private hospitals are still without a contract deal. But the New York State Nurses Association reached a last-minute tentative agreement Sunday night with two other hospitals, Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West in Manhattan, and Gov. Kathy Hochul called for binding arbitration.

The union has not reached a deal with Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. Mount Sinai management, which walked out of talks on the night of Jan. 5, returned to the table on the afternoon of Jan. 8.

“There remain outstanding issues at Montefiore and Mount Sinai and I am now calling for binding arbitration so that all parties can swiftly reach a resolution,” Gov. Hochul said in a statement, adding that the state Department of Health would “continue to enforce staffing requirements under the law at these hospitals.”

Montefiore management said it has agreed with the governor’s request, adding that “We hope that NYSNA’s leadership accepts the Governor’s proposal and rescinds their strike threat.”

“We welcome the Governor’s support in fighting for fair contracts that protect our patients, and we will not give up on our fight to ensure that our patients have enough nurses at the bedside,” NYSNA responded. “Gov. Hochul should listen to frontline COVID nurse heroes and respect our federally protected labor and collective bargaining rights. 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.”

“Our number-one issue is the crisis of staffing,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans told an online press conference on the morning of Jan. 8. “It is the issue that our employers have ignored, made excuses about, and fought against us on. Our bosses created the understaffing crisis by failing to hire and retain enough nurses.”

Mount Sinai, she said, has over 500 vacancies, so “in the neonatal ICU, nurses are regularly forced to take on three sick babies to care for, when the standard is one-to-one or one-to-two.” Montefiore, she continued, has 760 nursing vacancies, and “too often” emergency-room nurses are responsible for 20 patients, when the standard is three.

Montefiore currently has about 3,500 nurses on staff and Mount Sinai has 3,625, according to NYSNA.

The union has now reached tentative contract agreements with seven of the nine hospitals where strikes had been authorized for Jan. 9. Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian in Manhattan and Maimonides in Brooklyn have ratified them, and results have not yet been reported from BronxCare, Flushing in Queens, and Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island.

Those deals, the union said, include significant improvements to staffing. They will also give raises of 7% in the first year, 6% in the second, and 5% in the third, compounding to a total of 19.1%, and “preserve health care and other benefits.”

At NewYork-Presbyterian, the vote, announced Jan. 7, was relatively narrow, with 57% of the nurses in favor. The hospital has almost 4,000 nurses.

Mount Sinai says it offered NYSNA the same deal that NewYork-Presbyterian got, but the union demanded a bigger pay increase.

“Mount Sinai is dismayed by NYSNA’s reckless actions,” management said in a statement. “The union is jeopardizing patients’ care, and it’s forcing valued Mount Sinai nurses to sacrifice their dedication to patient care and their own livelihoods. We have offered a 19.1% compounded pay raise over three years, which is the same offer other hospital systems in the city have made. Still, NYSNA refuses to back off its plan to strike on Monday, even though it has called off planned strikes at other New York City hospitals. It’s not reasonable for NYSNA to ask for a significant wage increase above and beyond these other sites.”

Hagans said on Jan. 6 that the main issue was safe staffing, and “until we have proper staff ratios at Mount Sinai, we can't reach an agreement.”

The Mount Sinai Health System chain operates seven hospitals in the city and one in Nassau County, and has more than 43,000 employees.

NYSNA nurses’ contracts also expired Dec. 31 at four other hospitals, all in Brooklyn. They reached a tentative agreement at Brooklyn Hospital Center Jan. 6. Nurses at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center have delivered a 10-day notice that they would go on strike Jan. 17; talks are scheduled to resume Jan. 9. Bargaining is still in progress at Interfaith Medical Center and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, the union said.

“The pandemic really exposed how short-staffed we’ve been,” Hagans said Jan. 7, and the hospitals didn’t replace nurses who left, which “made it worse.”

She lashed into management for paying executives seven-figure salaries and spending an unknown amount hiring temporary nurses to work during a strike.

“They should use those resources and that amount of money to improve staffing and hire more nurses,” she said.