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After four weeks of picketing through bitter cold, the end of the largest nurses' strike in the history of New York City is in sight.
On Monday, The New York State Nurses Association declared victory for 10,500 nurses employed by Mount Sinai Health System and Montefiore Medical Center, announcing that the union had reached tentative agreements with both hospitals. Days later, NYSNA leadership announced that the union had accepted a mediator's proposal for a tentative agreement with New York-Presbyterian for 4,200 striking nurses that was proposed over the weekend.
The nurses are voting on the tentative agreements throughout Wednesday evening and, if approved, most nurses will return to work on Feb. 14.
According to NYSNA, the agreements will maintain nurse staffing levels that were established following the shorter 2023 strike, create more protections for healthcare workers and includes 12 percent raises over the contract’s three-year lifespan.
“For four weeks, nearly 15,000 NYSNA members held the line in the cold and in the snow for safe patient care,” NYSNA president Nancy Hagans said in a statement. “Now, nurses at Montefiore and Mount Sinai systems are heading back to the bedside with our heads held high after winning fair tentative contracts that maintain enforceable safe staffing ratios, improve protections from workplace violence, and maintain health benefits with no additional out-of-pocket costs for frontline nurses.”
The agreements don't reinstate three Mount Sinai labor and delivery unit nurses who were fired just before the strike began, the union has said.
Brendan Carr, the CEO of Mount Sinai Health System said in a statement that he's hopeful nurses will return to work in the near future following the agreement.
"While it has been amazing to once again see Mount Sinai do extraordinary things in order to serve our patients and community, it will take time to rebuild the momentum that we had in the alignment of our organization," he said. "I commit to you that we will heal the organization together in the service of continuing to help people to live longer and better lives."
A spokesperson for Montefiore did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"We look forward to bringing our nurses back to care for our patients," a New York-Presbyterian spokesperson said in a statement.
Nurses started bargaining their contract in September and walked out on strike on Jan. 12 after failing to reach agreements with the three healthcare systems. The hospitals were far more prepared for this year’s strike than the 2023 strike, and together the three spent $100 million on replacement nurses to fill the place of the healthcare workers on strike.
Negotiations between the union and hospitals broke down several times in the four weeks that nurses were on strike and both sides repeatedly traded barbs. NYSNA and management for the three hospital systems reached the tentative agreement with the help of a mediator.
“I’m so proud of the resilience and strength of NYSNA nurses,” the union’s executive director, Pat Kane, said in a statement. “They have shown that when we fight, we win. Nurses sacrificed their own pay and healthcare while on strike to defend patient care for all of New York. We helped galvanize a movement for worker and healthcare justice that reached beyond New York City."
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