With as many as 12,000 nurses threatening to walk off the job on January 9th, the Greater New York Hospital Association is forced to prepare. Melissa Russo reports.
With a possible nurses strike on the horizon, one New York City hospital is nearing an agreement with its nursing staff to keep them working amid the ongoing "tridemic," sources told NBC New York.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital and its nurses reached a tentative deal over the weekend, sources said, a week before nurses at that hospital and seven others were set to strike. Under the deal that was offered, nurses would get 18 percent raises over the next three years, with added incentives to retain experienced nurses.
The hospital also pledges to address chronic understaffing while improving staff ratios in the emergency room, and there would be no cuts to health benefits, according to sources.
However, there are still seven other NYC hospitals (Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Maimonides, BronxCare, Richmond University Medical Center and Flushing Hospital Medical Center) that are still set to strike after giving notice to management Friday if a contract is not reached, a move that followed a ballot box vote to authorize a strike ahead of their contracts expiring on Dec. 31. That possible Jan. 9 strike would send already busy hospitals into full-on crisis mode, and have a devastating impact on care.
"It could be an enormous public health calamity," said Ken Raske of the Greater New York Hospital Association, who described the mood as among hospital managers as "extremely apprehensive."
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With the clock still ticking, nurses at four hospitals were back at the bargaining table on Monday. Matt Allen, a labor and delivery nurse on the negotiating committee at Mount Sinai, told NBC New York on Monday that there are more than 700 vacancies for nursing positions at Mount Sinai hospitals.
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"Staffing is the biggest issue that we're fighting for right now," said Allen. "We're hopeful that we're going to get something this week, before our strike is still on the table."
NBC New York has learned that the other hospitals that have not reached agreements with their nursing staffs are starting to shell out tens of millions of dollars in nonrefundable down payments to have traveling temporary nurses on reserve — a huge expense they must shoulder, even if no strike takes place.
The GNYHA said doing so works against the interest of the nurses in the union because it forces hospitals to spend money that could go to the nurses — but it also increases the leverage of nurses once the strike notice is issued. One nurse involved in negotiations estimated the cost of trade nurses is around $10,000 a week per travel nurse. The New York State Nurses Association estimated that the mere threat of a strike has already cost as much as $32 million to temp agencies, a cost they said could surge to more than $90 million if the travel nurses have to fill in for five or six days.
"Our ERs are backed up, the tripledemic is raging," said Raske. "Even if one hospital would have a strike, it could ripple through the entire system."
The New York State Nurses Association has as many as 12,000 members threatening to conduct strikes at seven respective hospitals where contracts expired on Dec. 31. The private hospitals engage in separate negotiations, so it is possible that some hospitals could face a strike, but others may not.
The union says members are upset about staffing ratios at the local hospitals, contract proposals that they feel dramatically worsen their healthcare benefits (while paying big bonuses to executives), and Mayor Eric Adams' recent move to forcibly hospitalize psychiatric patients. All of those elements have left workers overworked and burnt out.
"We're not able to clean the patient on time, not able to give medicine on time, no breaks," said Allen. "Burnout was real, so we leave the profession and go to work at a travel agency that's going to pay us more."
The tentative agreement at NY-Presbyterian is giving nurses at some of the other hospitals hope, while also possibly putting some pressure on the other hospitals to match those same terms.
But there is a large caveat to that: NY-Presbyterian is widely considered to be the richest hospital in the city, and not all hospitals are in the same financial situation. Smaller so-called "safety net" hospitals are more reliant on lower reimbursement rates for the care they provide, like through Medicare or Medicaid. Some of the others on the list say they are hemorrhaging money, but nurses at those hospitals aren't buying the argument.
According to a source familiar with Mount Sinai's past talks, the hospital had previously offered nurses a deal that included 14 percent raises over four years — a deal that nurses rejected, and it noticeably lower than the offer extended by NY-Presbyterian.
In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for Mount Sinai said that their bargaining teams "continue to make good-faith efforts to pursue a contract with NYSNA that is fair to our community and responsible with respect to the long-term financial health of our organization. Mount Sinai nurses deserve the best possible working environment, wages, and benefits, and we're tirelessly pursing these to all our employees' advantage."
The statement added that the hospital system is "prepared for staffing changes, and we will do our best to ensure our patients' care is not disrupted and will do everything possible to minimize inconvenience to patients."
The average salary for nurses in New York is $93,000, and $98,000 in NYC, nurses union and the GNYHA confirmed. However, there is a big disparity between nurse pay in private vs public hospitals, where salaries are almost $20,000 less.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's office has said they are "monitoring the situation." Sources said that both Hochul and Adams are getting regular daily updates on the talks.
All of this comes as the city deals with what is being called a tridemic - simultaneous and serious spikes in infections with COVID, the flu and the respiratory condition RSV.
The city has already issued an advisory (but not a mandate) suggesting that people go back to wearing masks indoors.
