NEW YORK (AP) — Negotiations to keep about 10,000 nurses in New York from walking off the job went into overdrive last weekend, as some major hospitals were already preparing for a potential strike Friday, sending ambulances to other part and moving some patients, including vulnerable newborns.
The strike could begin early Monday at several private hospitals, including two of the city’s largest: Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, each of which has more than 1,000 beds.
They and many other hospitals are negotiating with nurses who want raises and an end to what they say are unbearable staff cuts, nearly three years into the coronavirus pandemic.
“New York hospitals have violated our trust during years of understaffing, and the staffing shortage has worsened since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Nurses Union President Nancy Hagans said at a press conference Friday . “The time has come for them to come to the table and provide the safe staffing standards our nurses and patients deserve.”
Fran Cartwright, Mount Sinai’s chief nursing officer, acknowledged that nurses are thin. But he emphasized the disruptive influence of the pandemic on people’s professional lives, at the bedside and beyond.
“Our nurses work with patients 24/7, so they feel it and I feel it with them,” she said in an interview. “After a pandemic it takes years to add stability.”
via the Associated Press
After taking on health risks and huge workloads at the height of the virus crisis, the profession is facing a burnout that has prompted many nurses to take other jobs or at least give up full-time hospital work .
Nurses at a Massachusetts hospital went on strike for nearly 10 months until last January, marking the longest nursing strike in the state’s history. Thousands of nurses at two California hospitals went on strike for a week in May.
Talks took an acrimonious turn at Mount Sinai, where the union – the New York State Nurses Association – said management left the bargaining table shortly after midnight and called off negotiations on Friday.
“Shame on you, Mount Sinai,” Hagans said.
The hospital responded with a statement accusing the union of being “reckless” and “putting patient care at risk.”
Mount Sinai said it offered a three-year round of pay raises totaling 19 percent, equal to what the union recently won in interim contracts with other hospitals.
Cartwright said talks hit a snag when management tried to continue hiring and the union still wanted to discuss wages. He said management was prepared to resume talks once the union was willing to address other issues.
Mount Sinai said it has begun canceling some elective surgeries, rerouting most ambulances and moving some patients, including newborns to intensive care units, from its flagship hospital and its two affiliates, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside. Each has approximately 500 beds.
Cartwright said the flagship was “broken” by the transfer of patients, particularly infants, but would ensure adequate care for them and the patients who remain.
Negotiations also continued at Montefiore and the roughly 850-bed BronxCare health care system, as Flushing Hospital Medical Center reached a tentative agreement with nurses Friday night. Spokesmen for the union and Flushing Hospital, a 300-bed facility in Queens, confirmed the settlement but did not immediately release details.
Spokesmen for Montefiore and BronxCare did not immediately comment Friday.
BronxCare said Thursday it was confident a settlement could be reached, while Montefiore Senior Vice President Joe Solmonese said the nurses were rejecting a “generous” offer. He said it mirrors increases the union has agreed to elsewhere, including the addition of 78 emergency room nurses and other increases in wages, benefits and staffing.
On December 30, the day before the contract was due to expire, the nurses gave 10 days’ notice of the planned strike. Such notification is required by law so hospitals have time to line up temporary replacements.
A major medical center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, reached a tentative settlement with the union the next day. Maimonides University and Richmond Medical Centers entered into interim agreements on January 4.
But “it’s not just about compensation,” Hagans said in a briefing Thursday. “It’s about taking care of our patients. It’s about safety.”
Nurses are pushing for commitments to what they see as standard staffing levels, such as having at least one nurse for each of the sickest patients in the ICU and one nurse for about four patients in a typical medical-surgical unit.
Meanwhile, negotiations are also underway with four private hospitals in Brooklyn. The nurses have not yet authorized a strike, even though the vote is underway, Hagans said.
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