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By Joe Maniscalco

Earlier this month, New York City physicians working under an expired contract since last summer showed up on Mayor Eric Adams’ Gracie Mansion doorstep to remind Hizzoner that there is a retention and recruitment crisis going on inside the municipal NYC Health + Hospitals system and that he really needs to get off the pot and sign a new pact with them before things get much worse.

"We have large staffing shortages in every hospital and several of the mayoral agencies,” Dr. Jasmeet Sandhu, a physician at Mt. Sinai Elmhurst Hospital and member of Doctors Council SEIU, said at the July 10 rally.

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest public hospital system in the United States today—but that hasn’t saved its unionized physicians from watching their contract with the City of New York evaporate in the summer heat—or now having their subsequent contract extension vanish the same way at the end of this month.

The situation, physicians with the Doctors Council SEIU, insist—is already critical. The City of New York is experiencing a 20-percent spike in Emergency Room visits and admissions, but ERs throughout the city are going understaffed on nights and weekends. Hard-pressed Physicians further report prolonged delays for necessary surgeries, department closures, and even “significant backlogs for routine patient check-ups.”

Ever-increasing numbers of people seeking care—coupled with physician burnout and high turnover rates—have compelled New York City to try and bring in temporary replacement docs in an effort to make up for the loss of dedicated longterm doctors—many of whom have spent their careers inside the NYC Health + Hospitals system caring for patients regardless of their ability to pay.

The day after that Gracie Mansion rally, however, a seemingly unperturbed Mayor Adams cooly reminded everybody at a City Hall press conference that “no one has done it better” when it comes to settling union contracts.

Oh, great. This is all about the mayor’s job performance and how’s he’s doing— and not the crisis of health facing New Yorkers?

The mayor then went on to crow about getting a “ninety-six, ninety-seven-percent ratification rate.”

“We have been able to settle the contract of our ferry boat operators after 13 years…our police officers…” Adams continued.

The Adams administration has locked up contracts for the cops and ferry boat captains? Well, good—everybody who works for a living, especially at considerable cost to their own wellbeing, has earned the right to fundamental contract protections.

But that has absolutely zero to do with the necessity of confronting the current health care crisis within the NYC Health + Hospitals system that physicians have carefully diagnosed.

Which leads us to something else the mayor of this fair city also blurted out at that press conference.

“We have to give them a contract,” Adams told reporters in his own inimitable and paternalistic fashion. “You guys know how I feel about settling contracts for city employees.”

Very revealing.

Number one, the chief executive or burgermeister of this town, or any other village or municipality you can name, isn’t “giving” workers a damned thing. Working people demand and achieve the gains that they earn. They aren’t bestowed upon them by some benevolent ruler or king. That’s not how this has ever worked.

“We get it,” Adams further tried. “We need our doctors—and particularly in our Health + Hospitals system. [Office of Labor Relations Commissioner] Renee [Campion] is a champion. She does it right; she protects our city's dollars. But she also knows that we want to be fair to our city employees, and we’re going to  do it. It’s going to be done.”

You hear that ER doctor who took out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to study medicine and is wrist deep in the guts of someone’s child at 2 a.m. trying to avert catastrophe? Cool your jets, “It’s going to be done.”

Jeez…why don’t all you people just learn some patience from New York City EMS workers who have been waiting around for the pay parity promised to them ever since…forever?

It’s also important to note here that—according to NYC’s Independent Budget Office, anyway—the mayor is sitting on a multi-billion dollar budget surplus. Finally addressing NYC Health + Hospitals’ ills would seems like money well spent, no? That’s number two. 

Beyond that, though, it ought to grind the gears of everyone who toils hard for every buck they earn to be slyly referred as “our city employees.” It’s an outrageously reductive tactic intended to minimize and marginalize the contributions of all the working people who make New York City—and every city around the globe, for that matter—possible.

It is infinitely more conceivable for us to envision a scenario where the high-priced suits populating City Hall are suddenly furloughed to a desert island somewhere, than it is for us to imagine being without doctors, nurses, and EMS workers for a single day.

Got sent to a desert island? Well, hope ya got plenty of coconuts and sunscreen over there—we’re happy to send you a few crates of the latter in case you don’t. But do without doctors, nurses and EMS workers for even a minute—come on, man, you gotta be joking!

And yet, it’s the high-priced suits who somehow get to dictate how doctors, nurses and EMS workers are going to live their lives. The power imbalance couldn’t be more staggering. Something ain’t right—and working people know it.

New York City municipal retirees fighting the Adams administration’s ongoing efforts to push them into a demonstrably inferior and profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan where also back out the pavement this week battling against Mayor Adams’ increasingly crazy obsession to destroy their traditional Medicare benefits.

This time, city attorneys were in court working hard trying to convince a judge to nuke the current injunction against retiree copays, so that the administration can start raking them in next year.

Who knows, maybe if the Adams administration wasn’t continuing to devote so much time, energy, and resources into trying to privatize retiree health care, it would have already signed a contract that adequately confronts the NYC Health + Hospitals’ retention and recruitment crisis, and also rectified the pay inequity still afflicting the city’s truly heroic EMS workers.

"The Doctors Council agrees with Mayor Adams, we need to recruit and retain doctors, particularly in our Health + Hospitals system and Mayoral Agencies,” the Doctors Council SEIU told Work-Bites in an email. “To do so, we need a contract that values the hard work, dedication, and sacrifices our members make every day for the City of New York. On Wednesday July 10th, a delegation of Doctors Council members stood outside of Gracie Mansion to deliver a petition signed by doctors, patients, and supporters to demand the Mayor fully fund H+H and Mayoral Agencies. We are open to continuing this conversation with the Mayor if he is willing.”

Members of the Doctors Council SEIU are scheduled to hold a town hall meeting with Dr. Mitch Katz, NYC H+H Hospitals CEO and president, on Monday, July 22, in a further effort to resolve the contract dispute.

Let’s hope a new sense of urgency emerges out of that meeting—stat!