NY Nurses: ‘We Want Safe Staffing In Reality, Not On Paper’

More than 100,000 nurses around New York City could still strike on Jan. 9. Above: NYSNA rallies for better patient care outside Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx last year.

By Steve Wishnia

Three New York City private hospitals have reached tentative contract deals with nurses, but more than 10,000 nurses at five others are still scheduled to strike on Jan. 9.

New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans announced Jan. 5 that the union had achieved agreements with Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Richmond University Medical Center the previous night. The proposed three-year pacts have “major gains on staffing and wages,” she told an online press conference, including pay increases of 19.1% compounded over three years.

Negotiations continue at BronxCare Health System, Flushing Hospital Medical Center in Queens, Montefiore Bronx, and Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside and West in Manhattan, five of the eight hospitals where nurses voted almost unanimously on Dec. 30 to authorize a strike. At New York Presbyterian in upper Manhattan, more than 4,000 nurses are voting on whether to ratify a contract proposal reached Dec. 31.

Federal law requires hospital workers to give 10 days’ notice before they can legally go on strike.

“Staffing is our top priority,” Hagans said. The union wants the hospitals to reduce the average number of patients per nurse to one or two in intensive-care and neonatal intensive-care units, three or four in telemetry units, and four or five on medical-surgical wards.

“We can’t continue to deliver care when you go in at 7 o’clock, and at 7:30 or 8 at night you have not taken a break,” Hagans said. In the ICU, she added, “sometimes patients are so sick you need two nurses to take care of them.”

At Maimonides, she said, the proposed deal would increase the number of nurses on duty in the emergency room and the mother-baby and chemotherapy units. NYSNA is recommending that nurses ratify it, saying that it offers the same raise as the New York Presbyterian proposal, and would ensure “a near-universal ratio-based staffing plan hospital-wide”; improve staffing enforcement; and preserve health benefits with no increased cost to employees.

But at Mount Sinai, Hagans said, the ratio of sick babies to nurses in the neonatal ICU is “double” what it should be. The “gold standard” in ICUs is one or two patients per nurse.

Mount Sinai and Montefiore both say they have made contract offers comparable to the other hospitals.

“New York State Nurses Association leadership at Montefiore refuses to come to an agreement despite a generous offer that includes an 18% wage increase, fully funded health care for life, and a significant increase in registered nurses in the emergency departments,” Montefiore senior vice president Joe Solmonese said in a statement.

He said the hospital’s offer “mirrors the tentative agreement NYSNA union leadership reached with New York Presbyterian,” even though Montefiore has lost nearly $600 million since the COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago, while New York Presbyterian posted net profits of roughly $200 million in 2022.

Montefiore, however, has some of the highest-paid hospital executives in the state, Hagans responded. According to federal nonprofit-organization tax forms analyzed by Crain’s Health Pulse last year, Montefiore CEO Philip Ozuah received more than $7 million compensation in 2020, and three other officers or chairs got more than $4 million. At Mount Sinai, CEO Kenneth Davis took in more than $5.3 million in 2020. At New York Presbyterian, CEO Steven J. Corwin made more than $9 million in 2019, according to a similar analysis by ProPublica.

Meanwhile, Hagans said in a statement, nurses at Montefiore are so stretched that one nurse in the emergency department is sometimes responsible for 20 patients.

Staffing ratios are often not enforced, NYSNA executive director Pat Kane said. “Our contracts are not being adhered to.” At Montefiore, she said, “we have a big problem with patients being placed in hallways” — to the point where the hospital has installed televisions in the hallways for them to watch.

“We want safe staffing in reality, not on paper,” Hagans said. “It’s really up to the bosses to come to the table and negotiate a fair contract.”

Nurses at two more hospitals, Brooklyn and Wyckoff in Brooklyn, are now voting on whether to authorize a strike, the union said.