‘Overworked, Underpaid, And Knocked Out’: 7,000 Nurses Go On Strike At NYC Hospitals

Pay is important, but striking nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center say safe-staffing is vital. Photos by Steve Wishnia

By Steve Wishnia

More than 7,000 nurses went on strike at 6 a.m. Jan. 9 after failing to reach a contract agreement with Mount Sinai Hospital in East Harlem and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, two of the largest privately owned hospitals in New York City.

Mount Sinai management denounced the New York State Nurses Association for “reckless behavior” after the union rejected Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal for binding arbitration.

“NYSNA leadership walked out shortly after 1 a.m. Monday morning,” the hospital said in a statement. “They refused to accept the exact same 19.1% increased wage offer over three years agreed to by eight other hospitals, including two other Mount Sinai Health System campuses.”

That statement ignored the main reason for the strike, some of the several hundred nurses at a noontime rally outside Mount Sinai Jan. 9 told Work-Bites. “Safe staffing!” chorused four oncology-department nurses when asked why they were out.

Strikers challenge hospital executives continuing to rake in millions while understaffed nurses struggle just to deliver the care patients need.

“Nurses are taking care of double the patients,” said nurse-practitioner Chloe Ray. “We’re overworked, underpaid, and knocked out.”

The standard for adequate care is for nurses in the department to have no more than five patients at a time, said registered nurse Amanda Wilkinson, but their load goes as high as nine to 15. The lower number means they can handle routine tasks like administering medications and checking vital signs and still be able to jump to deal with an emergency, she explained.

“You can go from a stable patient to a nonstable patient in a matter of seconds,” Wilkinson said. “They’re very sick. They need supportive care around the clock.”

Intensive-care unit nurses who shouldn’t have more than two patients at a time have three or four, said a nurse who’s worked at Mount Sinai for more than 30 years and asked to remain anonymous. The nurse also said those on medical-surgical wards who should have five or six — have to handle seven or eight.

“I’ve never seen the hospital this poorly staffed,” said a similarly experienced surgical-ICU nurse. “It’s sad. It’s really sad. Every unit is like that.”

Striking nurses say something is very wrong inside Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center.

“When we take breaks, we’re charting,” she added: Nurses who get 60 minutes for a meal break spend 10 minutes eating and 50 minutes at the computer entering data into patients’ charts. “We do 24-hour shifts. If the night shift is short, I have to stay. If the day shift is short, the night shift has to stay.”

“You don’t have time to drink water or go to the bathroom,” said another nurse who works with outpatients coming in for bone-marrow transplants. She typically takes care of 15 to 16 a day, administering fluids and infusions. Most have cancers like leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, or chronic conditions such as Crohn’s disease or sickle-cell anemia.

“There will be emergencies,” she said. “Patients can get acutely sick very quickly. If they’ve just had a bone-marrow transplant, they have no immune system.”

Joanne Alvarez, a lactation consultant who coaches new mothers on breastfeeding, said that on Jan. 7, the last day she worked before the strike, “I was about to help a mom,” but she was interrupted when she noticed that another patient was dripping blood on the floor. The vein where the woman’s IV had just been removed hadn’t healed yet.

“Not At Your Cervix, Ask Management Why?” Striking nurses demonstrate outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on Monday, Jan. 9.

Outside Mount Sinai, strikers lined both sides of Madison Avenue, chanting and singing loudly. One group of several dozen danced to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” waving their picket signs above their heads. Contingents from unions including SEIU 32BJ, the United Auto Workers, Communications Workers of America Local 1101, and union electricians and laborers joined the rally. Bodegas, coffee shops, and an unlicensed weed store on nearby blocks had “Solidarity With Striking Nurses” signs in their windows.”

One labor and delivery nurse carried a sign that read “Not at Your Cervix, Ask Management Why.”

Another striker’s sign said “Travel Nurses Salary: $10,000; Ken Davis Salary: $12,000,000; 500 NURSE VACANCIES.”

That sign, referring to Mount Sinai Health System CEO Kenneth L. Davis, highlighted what several strikers blamed for the hospital’s staffing problems: its failure to retain nurses it hires.

“Every time we hire someone, we can’t retain them,” said Chloe Ray. Management is not trying to compete with other hospitals on salary and benefits, said a veteran ICU nurse.

“It’s an ongoing joke that the hospital has enough money to pay travel nurses three or four times what they pay us,” said Philipp Carabuena, a night-shift nurse in the neurosurgery ICU. “They’re too cheap to pay staff.”

He said 10 of his coworkers on the night shift had quit, fed up with doing 24-hour stints.

He supports NYSNA’s decision to reject binding arbitration. “We were with the patients during COVID,” he said, while hospital executives were in Florida communicating on Zoom.

“They’re calling us greedy,” he adds. “The only way they’re going to be held accountable is if the state enforces safe-staffing laws.”

Montefiore, the other hospital on strike, said in a statement that the union had “decided to walk away from the bedsides of their patients” despite its “commitment to create over 170 new nursing positions.” It has about 760 vacant nursing jobs, according to NYSNA.

A nurse in Mount Sinai’s “step down” unit — for patients just released from the ICU who are “still very critical,” many on ventilators — said he has the standard patient load of three patients only “once in a while.” More often, he has four or five, and sometimes he has six.

“I just want better staffing and more respect,” he said. “Money’s important, but we just don’t have the staff to provide for the patients.”