NEW YORK — Nurses at 12 hospitals here are set to strike Jan. 12. Up to 20,000 members of the New York State Nurses Association are preparing to walk out after their contract expired Dec. 31. They’re fighting for better health care benefits, higher staffing levels and increased pay.
Hospital bosses are determined to “roll back safe staffing standards that nurses won when they went on strike at two major hospitals three years ago,” the nursing association said in a Jan. 2 statement. That strike involved 7,000 nurses. Days after they won, some 800 nurses at Mount Sinai South Nassau voted to join the union.
Hospital bosses “threaten RNs who have spoken out on workplace safety, questioned and threatened RNs regarding their union activities, interfered with RN’s rights to speak to co-workers,” the union said.
Managers at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn say they’re preparing to hire contract nurses to try to break any strike.
At the same time, more than 1,000 New York State Nurses Association members at three Northwell Health hospitals in Plainview, Syosset and Huntington on Long Island voted to strike Dec. 23. The date for the strike to begin hasn’t yet been set.
“We are working most shifts in the emergency room with too many patients and not enough nurses,” Chris Coburn, a registered nurse at Northwell’s Plainview Hospital, said on the union website. “Being asked to care for up to 12 patients” each shift “is physically impossible — it’s not the care I want to give. Patients deserve better.”
“NYSNA nurses on Long Island are united,” New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans said. “And they aren’t scared.”