15,000 New York Nurses Go on Strike

The largest nurses’ strike in New York City history began on January 12 according to newsreports, when approximately 15,000 nurses walked off their jobs in a large-scale protest led by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA). The nurses involved work at Montefiore Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian/Columbia and Mount Sinai Hospital, as well as two other Mount Sinai system hospitals.  For elected officials and others advocating for more unions in the workplace, it should be noted that the U.S. is right in the middle of a particularly harsh flu season.

The nurses’ strike comes amid a contract dispute between the union and the hospitals over proposed healthcare benefits, staffing levels, and workplace-violence protections, according to the NYSNA.  Using typical rhetoric, the union decried “greedy hospital executives” for putting “profits above safe patient care” and “forcing” nurses out on strike.

For its part, the hospitals revealed that the NYSNA was seeking $3.6 billion in demands, including a nearly 40% in wage increase, which hospital executives said were impossible to meet given shifting federal policies and resulting financial uncertainty.

These demands come three years after a similar strike occurred in 2023, when about 7,000 nurses walked off the job for three days, which resulted in a 19.1 percent salary increase distributed over three years, enhanced health benefits, hourly raises for nurses with advanced degrees, and lower nurse-to-patient ratios.

In the current iteration of negotiations the hospitals also revealed that the NYSNA’s demands include troubling proposals like requiring that a nurse not be terminated if found to be compromised by drugs or alcohol while on the job. So much for the “patient safety” argument.

As if to put an ironic, albeit humorous, twist on the latter issue, a bar in Brooklyn called Block Hill Station almost on cue offered buy-one-get-one-free beers to striking nurses fighting “for patient safety and fair staff benefits.”

On the more serious side of things, New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency leading into this week’s strike, as hospitals braced themselves for potential staffing shortages while seeking replacement workers to maintain continuity of their operations. Meanwhile the newly installed mayor of New York City joined the striking nurses’ protests with seemingly predictable talking points of his own.

Unfortunately, economics has a way of being indifferent to all the heated rhetoric, and it remains to be seen how long it takes for the NYSNA and hospitals to reach an agreement. In the meantime, caught in the middle are patients waiting for the two sides to sort it out.

About the author

Sean P. Redmond

Sean P. Redmond is Vice President, Labor Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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