Two major hospitals in New York City are expecting nurse strikes

Due to a disagreement over compensation and staffing levels, nurses at two of the biggest hospitals in New York City are prepared to walk out on Monday.

After a weekend of negotiations that failed to generate a settlement for a new contract, nurses at two of New York City's top hospitals were prepared to walk out on Monday in a dispute over pay and staffing levels.

Up to 3,500 nurses from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and another 3,600 from Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan will participate in the walkout, which is scheduled to start at 6 a.m.

As a result of persistent understaffing that forces them to care for an excessive number of patients, the New York State Nurses Association, which represents the employees, claimed it was forced to take this severe action.

Nurses are reluctant to strike. By rejecting our ideas to address the desperate situation of hazardous staffing that damages our patients, managers have forced us to strike, the union claimed in a statement late Sunday.

In preparation for a walkout, hospitals have begun relocating patients, rerouting ambulances to other facilities, delaying non-emergency medical operations, and making plans to hire temporary staff.

Late on Sunday, Governor Kathy Hochul encouraged the hospitals and the union to submit their disagreement to formal arbitration.
The management of Montefiore declared in a statement that it was ready to let an arbitrator decide the contract "as a means to obtaining an equitable resolution."

The plan was not immediately accepted by the union. Hochul, a Democrat, was urged in a statement to "listen to the frontline COVID nursing heroes and honour our legally protected labour and collective bargaining rights."

The latest of a group of hospitals with contracts with the union that expired concurrently are Montefiore and Mount Sinai. Even in a city with as many hospitals as there were, the Nurses Association had first forewarned that it would all strike at once.

On Sunday, contracts for nurses at two Mount Sinai facilities were also reached in a preliminary manner. However, talks went on at the system's main hospital on the east side of Manhattan.

The union's emphasis on staffing-to-patient ratios, according to Mount Sinai's administration, "ignores the efforts we have made to attract and hire more new nurses, despite a global shortage of healthcare workers that is affecting hospitals across the country," they said in a statement.
Patients may experience delays in care, including ER visits and deliveries, if nurses go on strike.