About 10,000 New York nurses get deal, thousands remain on strike

After four weeks on strike, nurses at two New York City health systems have reached a deal on a new contract.

The New York State Nurses Association announced Monday that nurses at Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside and West have a tentative agreement on a new deal. The strike began Jan. 12.

About 10,500 nurses at Montefiore and Mount Sinai still must ratify the pact, but the union said the deal would include increases of 12% over the three-year pact. The association said nurses will return to work on Feb. 14.

The union also said the agreement will increase the number of nurses and protect benefits. The pact also includes a first: contractual protections to prevent nurses from losing their jobs to AI.

Even with the deal, about 4,200 nurses at some NewYork-Presbyterian facilities are still on strike as they look for a new agreement. The union said the top remaining iissue to be resolved involves provisions to ensure safe staffing.

But the nurses’ union celebrated the tentative agreement for more than 10,000 members. The association called it the biggest and longest nursing strike in New York City history.

Nancy Hagans, president of the New York State Nurses Association, said nurses have picketed in the snow and bitter cold for nearly a month to get the deal. Nurses recently marched across the Brooklyn Bridge.

“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,” Hagans said in a statement.

Mount Sinai said the system expects nurses to vote to ratify the contract on Wednesday. If the pact wins approval, Mount Sinai said it will begin bringing the nurses who were on strike back on the job.

“This process has been difficult for all of us,” Mount Sinai said in a statement Monday. “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. 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.”

Nurses at these NewYork-Presbyterian facilities are still on strike: Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan; Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan; and Allen Hospital in Inwood. All of the system’s facilities are open and accepting patients.

On the West Coast, more than 30,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses remain on strike as they look for a new contract. The strike began Jan. 26.On Monday, thousands of other Kaiser Permanente employees at labs and pharmacies in California also went on strike, KTLA-TV reported.

The Kaiser Permanente nursing contract dispute is being watched by other health systems.

Steve Wasson, chief data and intelligence officer for Strata Decision Technology, told Chief Healthcare Executive® in a recent interview that Kaiser’s contracts often establish precedents in other negotiations.

“When some of these large organizations lock in new contracts … It sets the market,” he says. “It kind of locks the market in. And so there's a trickle effect.”