More than 7,000 nurses at two major New York hospital systems walked off the job early Monday after labor talks broke down over staffing and workloads that they contend have overwhelmed their ranks.
Representatives from both hospitals said the union rejected a nearly 20 percent wage increase that nurses at peer institutions accepted in earlier bargaining talks.
New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) in a statement urged all parties to “remain at the bargaining table for however long it takes to reach a voluntary agreement.”
The strike comes as the Northeast is bracing for a potential wave of covid-19 cases wrought by the XBB.1.5 variant, an offshoot of the omicron variant that set off a spike in infections after the 2021-2022 holiday season. Infections from the new variant have swelled from barely 2 percent of U.S. cases at the start of December to more than 27 percent the first week of January, according to estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 70 percent of cases in the Northeast are believed to be XBB.1.5. In New York, covid-19-related hospitalizations increased 4 percent in the past week, according to the CDC.
Nursing unions across the country have pushed for more staffing since the pandemic took hold in 2020, citing burnout they contend has hindered patient care and placed health-care professionals in harm’s way.
More than 400 nurses walked off the job at a Chicago hospital on Jan. 3, for a three-day strike after layoffs exacerbated staffing shortages. Nurses in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif., staged a nine-day strike beginning Christmas Eve. Another 400 health-care workers — including nursing assistants, surgical technicians, pharmacists, dietitians and lab assistants — launched a five-day work stoppage in Marina del Rey, Calif., on Dec. 12, over similar concerns.
New York nurses reached agreements with seven other hospitals around a common bargaining framework. They will get close to a 20 percent salary increase over three years, and the hospitals agreed to higher staffing standards. The strikes at Mount Sinai and Montefiore have no planned end date.
“Since [New York City] nurses started negotiating our contracts four months ago, we have said our number one issue is the crisis of chronic understaffing that harms patient care,” New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans told reporters Friday. “Safe staffing is about having enough nurses to deliver safe, quality care to every patient. It is the issue that our employers have ignored, made excuses about, and fought against us on.”
The union provided the hospitals 10 days notice before the strike, a standard practice among nursing unions to give management time to find workers to care for patients, or postpone elective procedures and appointments.
Mount Sinai reached tentative labor agreements at two of its campuses before the strike deadline, but did not come to a deal with nurses at its main hospital, which houses one of the system’s two neonatal care units. While some infants have been transferred out, others remain there, supported by staff from other parts of the system, according to the hospital. According to a Jan. 4 memo sent to staff by Mount Sinai officials, the hospital was preparing to divert ambulances and transfer some patients, and it had begun to cancel some elective surgeries.
“Our first priority is the safety of our patients. We’re prepared to minimize disruption, and we encourage Mount Sinai nurses to continue providing the world-class care they’re known for, in spite of NYSNA’s strike,” Lee said.
At Montefiore, elective surgeries and appointments at its ambulatory locations are being rescheduled. In a statement, Montefiore said the strike “will spark fear and uncertainty across our community.”
Mount Sinai’s Lee called the union’s decision to strike “reckless.” But nurses who walked off the job said that hospital management put patients at risk by refusing to fill growing numbers of vacant jobs.
One Mount Sinai nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from supervisors, said her shifts are routinely understaffed. Either two nurses are scheduled for jobs that require three nurses, or one of the three nurses on shift is dispatched to another unit experiencing more dire shortages, the nurse said.
“How am I supposed to fulfill my duties?” the nurse said. “How am I supposed to console a grieving parent when I have three other kids who need their medications?”
The union is pushing for contract terms that would penalize the hospital for not maintaining a full complement of nurses, said Matt Allen, a registered nurse in labor and delivery and a member of the union’s board of directors. Those penalties could take the form of fines, mandatory hiring or increased compensation for employees that worked understaffed shifts, he said.
“Every unit is understaffed,” Allen said.
He said the nurses and the hospitals have not set future dates to return to the bargaining table.
“We continue to want to negotiate with them, but there needs to be some movement on their side,” Allen said. “We’re at a standstill right now.”
In a Twitter post, the union said that patients going to either hospital system “is NOT crossing our strike line.” It invited patients to join demonstrations after receiving care.
“Nurses have been through hell and back for their patients,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “They already fought unimaginable fights to keep us healthy and alive, and they shouldn’t have to keep fighting. Safe staffing ratios and healthy conditions common in every hospital.”
The U.S. health-care system is already facing a shortage of nurses. From 2020 to 2021, the total number of registered nurses in the country fell by 100,000, according to an April study published in the journal Health Affairs.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing found that nursing schools turned away 91,938 applicants to nursing programs in 2021 due to a lack of qualified instructors.
The shortages may well get worse: The average age of a registered nurse is 52, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. By comparison, the average age is younger than 42 for the rest of the U.S. workforce, according to federal data. That suggests a coming retirement boom among nurses, experts say, unless health-care employers boost recruiting or retention efforts.
Fenit Nirappil and Lauren Weber contributed to this report.
correction
An earlier version of this article incorrectly said nurses in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif. staged a five-day strike last month. That strike lasted nine days. This version has been corrected.
