NY-Presbyterian Nurses Ratify Contract Ending Bitter Strike

The longest and most bitter strike by nurses in New York City history is over.

Forty one days after they walked off the job, striking nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian voted overwhelmingly on Feb 21 to ratify a new three-year contract that will give them pay hikes of just over 12 percent over the course of the contract as well as increased protection against layoffs and increased staffing levels, the union announced.

NY-Presbyterian was the last of the three big hospitals to return to work. At the start of the strike on Jan. 21, there were 15,000 nurses on strike at the three hospital systems. More than 10,000 Nurses who had walked at Mount Sinai and Montefiore Health Systems in the Bronx vote to end their strike on Feb. 11 and returned to work on Feb. 14. The 4,500 nurses on strike at New York-Presbyterian will be returning to work within the next few days.

The strike was longer and more bitter than the previous strike three years ago which ended after only three days.

Although the three hospitals hired a high priced crisis management PR firm, the nurses seemed to enjoy broad-based public support. Whistle blowing nurses walked the picket lines during a bitter cold stretch and drew support from elected officials including Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Passing motorists, taxi cab drivers and fire engines frequently showed support by blowing horns as they passed picket lines.

The nurses union claimed that chronic understaffing put patient health care in peril and pointed to the multi-million dollar pay packages that top executives at the hospital were being paid.

The hospitals claimed that with the impending federal health care cuts the nurses initial demands were excessive, seeking wage hikes of up to 40 percent. In the end, the pact for all three hospitals calls for wage hikes of four percent each year.

Staffing levels were a big part of the negotiations. On Feb. 17, an arbiter had awarded nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital an award of $399,829 for chronic understaffing in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit.

The three hospital systems brought in traveling nurses that were getting $9,000 a week to take care of patients during the strike. But elective surgeries were cancelled and some patients were moved to branches of the hospital systems that were not on strike.

“Nurses went up against the wealthiest, largest private employers who tried to undermine nurses’ spirit and union power repeatedly,” said NYSNA executive director Pat Kane. “Nurses remained strong through one of the hardest fights the labor movement has seen in this city in years and proved to employers that when you mess with the nurses, you have to face the city’s entire labor movement.”

In the end, 93 percent of the nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian approved a contract over Feb. 20 and 21 that was similar to pay hike agreed to at the other two hospital systems but the union said that there more protection against layoffs, use of AI and greater staffing. Nurses at NY-Presbyterian had split with the other two hospital systems initially over issues connected to staffing. The management bargaining unit at NewYork-Presbyterian balked initially at accepting the agreement the other hospitals accepted. The union put it to vote any way, but rank-and-file nurses at NY-P followed the lead of their local leaders and rejected the original deal and remained on strike before finally approving a pact ten days later.

Management appeared to be striking a conciliatory tone now that the long and bitter strike is over. “The new contract reflects our respect for our nurses and the critical role they play as part of our exceptional care teams,” said a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, the UWS hospital that was on strike.