MANHATTAN — Thousands of nurses at several of the city's biggest hospitals might stage coordinated strikes throughout the holiday season as the New York State Nurses Association works through difficult contract negotiations.
Nearly 10,000 unionized nurses at the Upper East Side's Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Upper West Side's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, the New York-Presbyterian hospitals on the Upper East Side and in Washington Heights and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, might walk out, according to Crain's New York Business.
Strike votes are scheduled this week at Mount Sinai and Montefiore, after nurses at St. Luke's Roosevelt and New York-Presbyterian already authorized strikes, the report said.
Some of the nurses began picketing in October, distributing information to stress their demand for fair contract that preserve their health benefits, according to the nurses association. Their contracts expired many months ago and negotiations have stalled.
"The hospital's offers don't meet our members' needs," Elaine Charpentier, the nurses association’s negotiator for St. Luke's-Roosevelt said in a statement after the strike authorization vote on Nov. 4. "They want to force higher premiums, up to $100 more a month, on their front line health care workers. In addition, their pay offer is insufficient in one of America's most expensive regions."
The hospitals said the nurses are asking too much from them during a time when no new revenue is coming in as hospitals are grappling with cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, Crain's said, noting that an average nurse gets $130,000 in salary and benefits, which would likely increase nearly 10 percent over three years under the union's demanded contract package.
"From the hospitals' point of view, it is an approach to bargaining that could be very expensive to [them],” Bruce McIver, president of the League of Voluntary Hospitals, which is bargaining with NYSNA on behalf of member hospitals, told Crain's.
