New York nurses’ strike ends after tentative agreement with hospitals

A nurses’ strike at two New York City private hospital systems came to an end after 7,000 nurses spent three days picketing.

The New York State Association of Nurses union struck tentative agreements with Mount Sinai Health System and Montefiore Health System, which operates three hospitals in the Bronx that were hit.

The nurses argued that the immense shortage of staff caused widespread burnout, undermining their ability to adequately care for their patients.

The union said the deal will provide “safe staffing ratios” for all inpatient units at Mount Sinai and Montefiore, “so there are always enough nurses at the bedside to provide safe patient care, not just on paper.”

In Montefiore, the hospital agreed to financial penalties for failing to meet agreed staffing levels across all units.

Montefiore said the deal also includes 170 new nursing positions, a 19.1% increase in salary, lifetime health coverage for eligible retirees and the addition of “significantly more nurses” in the ER.

The deals were announced in the early hours of Thursday morning – at 3am for Montefiore and about 30 minutes later for Mount Sinai. Nurses were expected to return to work for the 7am shift on Thursday, and Montefiore Medical Center said all surgeries, procedures and outpatient appointments for Thursday and afterward will continue as scheduled.

Nurses will need to vote to approve the deal before it is finalized. But the union said the tentative deal would help put more nurses to work and allow patients to receive better care.

“Through our unity and putting everything on the line, we have achieved safe staffing rates applicable in Montefiore and Mount Sinai, where nurses have gone on strike to care for patients,” the nurses’ union said in a statement. “Today, we can go back to work with our heads held high, knowing that our victory means safer care for our patients and more sustainable jobs for our profession.”

Mount Sinai called the deal “fair and responsible”.

“Our proposed agreement is similar to that between NYSNA and eight other New York City hospitals,” Mount Sinai said in a statement. “It’s fair and responsible, and it puts patients first.”

“From the beginning, we came to the table committed to negotiating in good faith and addressing the priority issues for our nursing staff,” Montefiore said in a statement. “We know this strike has affected everyone – not just our nurses – and we are committed to reaching a resolution as soon as possible to minimize disruption to patient care.”

Hospitals remained open during the three-day strike, using higher-cost temporary nursing services to provide care and shifting other staff to handle non-medical nursing duties. They also diverted and transferred some patients to other hospitals and postponed some elective procedures.

The striking nurses said they are working long hours in unsafe conditions without sufficient pay – a refrain echoed by several other nurses’ strikes across the country in the past year. They said the hours and stress of having too many patients to care for are pushing nurses away and creating an ever-increasing crisis in staff and patient care.

The union representing the nurses reached tentative agreements offering the same 19% pay increases at other New York hospitals, preventing strikes by some 9,000 other nurses spread across seven hospitals across the city. But nurses at the hospitals who went on strike said pay increases were not the main issue, that the most serious staff shortages in Mount Sinai and Montefiore needed to be addressed before a deal could be reached.

Both hospitals criticized the union for going on strike rather than accepting offers they described as similar to those the union had accepted at other hospitals in the city.