NEW YORK — “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Unsafe staffing’s got to go,” chanted some 150 nurses on the picket line outside Mount Sinai West hospital here Jan. 13. Nearly 15,000 members of the New York State Nurses Association walked out at 10 hospital locations across the city the day before, the largest nurses’ strike in the city’s history. Trucks, cars, and city buses honk their horns in support.
Nurses at Montefiore, New York-Presbyterian, and Mount Sinai hospitals are fighting for better staff/patient ratios to allow for improved care, health care benefits for nurses and safe working conditions.
“We’re on the picket line because staffing levels are unsafe,” Sophia Yapparrindell, a Mount Sinai registered nurse, said. She carried a sign, “No health care, no nurses.”
“Ironically, our health care benefits” are on the chopping block, John Benson, a registered nurse in the Emergency Department at Mount Sinai West, told the Militant. “The hospital wants us to pay more for health insurance and give us fewer benefits. It’s a takeback contract.”
Hospital bosses are denouncing the nurses. “Unfortunately, NYSNA decided to move forward with its strike while refusing to move on from its extreme economic demands, which we cannot agree with,” a Mount Sinai spokesperson told the press.
Mount Sinai reported the corporation took in $11.9 billion in 2024.
“Prior to the last contract there was no enforceable plan for staff/patient ratios,” Benson said. A Jan. 2 statement by the union explains that bosses are trying to roll back staffing levels that nurses won when they went on strike at two New York hospitals three years ago. That contract expired Dec. 31. “The hospitals have no contingency to maintain staffing levels if nurses get sick,” Benson added.
“This strike is our chance to make meaningful change to the staffing ratios,” Jennifer Lynch, a nurse practitioner in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, told the Militant on the picket line of some 300 nurses at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital the same morning.
“The ratios depend on the unit,” Lynch said. “In the Emergency Department there are no ratios at all. Some nurses take care of 15 to 20 patients at a time. This is also the area where frustration among patients is highest after long waits.”
Lynch has worked there for 18 years. “We’re worried about AI,” she said. She described how hospital bosses “are introducing ‘virtual nursing.’ AI should not be used to override the judgment of experienced nurses, or to take away jobs.”
At the Mount Sinai West picket line Benson pointed to a number of recent on-the-job violent assaults targeting nurses, especially in the Emergency Department. “Society is becoming more violent,” he said. “I want to take care of my patients, but I also want to be safe at work and to go home to my family.”
Nurse Alicea Walker told the Militant, “We’re going to stay out until we get the health care coverage we need.”
NYSNA reported nurses at three Northwell Health hospitals in Plainview, Huntington and Syosset on Long Island reached new contract agreements Jan. 8 with improved staffing standards, 5% annual wage increases and maintaining their health insurance. Long Island nurses are voting on that contract this week.
The nurses union’s website urges working people to join the New York picket lines, which are up daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In addition to Mount Sinai West and New York-Presbyterian, nurses are on strike at Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Morningside and Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx. The exact picket line locations can be found at www.nysna.org/news/take-action-support-nyc-nurses-strike.
Contributions to the union’s strike fund are needed. They can be made at https://nysna.tfaforms.net/5110966.
Tamar Rosenfeld contributed to this article.