City, NYSNA Agree to $21M Payment To Settle Pension-Discrimination Suit

The de Blasio administration and the New York State Nurses Association July 18 reached a tentative settlement of a lawsuit alleging that city nurse positions were improperly denied “physically-taxing” status that would have permitted nurses and midwives to retire years earlier at full pension, under which the city will pay $20.8 million to roughly 1,665 nurses hired between 1965 and 2012.

Should the agreement be finalized—a meeting with affected employees and retirees to discuss the terms is set for mid-September—70 of the nurses would receive $99,000 as compensation for the five additional years they had to work because they were denied physically-taxing status that would have qualified them for full pensions at age 50. Another 25 would get $79,000 for working four years beyond when they could have retired, and 25 more would receive $59,000 for working three extra years.