7,000 nurses at the two biggest hospitals in New York City go on strike.

Listen the Article:

 

Monday morning, nurses at two of New York City’s biggest hospitals walked off the job in a dispute over pay and staffing levels. Talks for new contracts broke down overnight after failing over the weekend.

Some 3,600 nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx started walking out at 6 a.m.

The group that speaks for the workers, the New York State Nurses Association, said it was forced to take such a drastic step because there aren’t enough nurses to care for all the patients.

“Nurses don’t want to strike. We went on strike because our bosses wouldn’t listen to our ideas about how to fix the desperate crisis of unsafe staffing that hurts our patients “in a statement released late Sunday.

Around the time the strikes started, the union tweeted, “To all of our patients and all New Yorkers, we want to be very clear: if you are sick, please don’t wait to get medical care, even if we are on strike. In fact, we want you to join us on the strike line after you’ve gotten the care you need. Getting care wouldn’t count as crossing the picket lines, though.

The hospitals had been getting ready for a walkout by moving patients, sending ambulances to other places, putting off medical procedures that weren’t emergencies, and making plans to bring in temporary staff.

Late on Sunday, Gov. Kathy Hochul asked the hospitals and the union to settle their disagreement through binding arbitration.

In a statement, Montefiore’s administration said it was willing to let an arbitrator settle the contract “in order to reach a fair result.”

The union didn’t accept the offer right away. In a statement, it said that Hochul, who is a Democrat, “should listen to the COVID nurse heroes on the front lines and respect our federally protected rights to work and collective bargaining.”

Overnight, Mt. Sinai sent out a tweet saying that talks with its union members had ended:

New York says that Montefiore then released its own statement saying that the strike would start at 6 a.m. and that it was “a sad day for New York City.”

The hospital said, “We are still committed to providing care that is smooth and kind, even though we know that the union leadership’s decision will cause fear and uncertainty in our community.”

Montefiore and Mount Sinai are the last two hospitals whose union contracts ended at the same time. The Nurses Association had warned at first that it would hit all of them at the same time, which could be a disaster even in a city like New York with so many hospitals.

But as the deadline got closer, one hospital after another reached deals with the union.

The nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital voted Saturday to approve a deal that will give them raises of 7%, 6%, and 5% over the next three years and add more staff. People have used that deal, which covers 4,000 nurses, as a model for talks with other hospital systems.

Sunday, nurses at two Mount Sinai facilities tentatively agreed to contracts as well. But talks kept going at the system’s main hospital on the east side of Manhattan.

In a statement, Mount Sinai’s administration said that the union’s focus on staffing-to-patient ratios “ignores the progress we have made to attract and hire more new nurses, despite a global shortage of healthcare workers that is affecting hospitals across the country.”

If the nurses go on strike, things like visits to the emergency room and giving birth are likely to go wrong.

The babies in the neonatal ICU were moved out of Mount Sinai.

The station said that the patients and their families were worried because of how tense the situation was.

Sabrena Geborde, the wife of a patient at Mount Sinai,  “They don’t need this kind of distraction.”

Geborde and her husband Troy, who has end-stage ALS, went to Mount Sinai last week.

“When we got here, the nurses and doctors did a great job on my husband,” Geborde said. “My husband almost had a heart attack.”

Because of the possible strike, their regular hospital had to send them somewhere else, which is how they ended up at Mount Sinai.

“That’s something you never expect to have to deal with, and he’s holding on tight because he has to think about and deal with it. Geborde said, “As we speak, he’s barely hanging on to life, and they’re saving my husband’s life in there right now.”