New York City expects biggest nurses strike as nearly 15,000 set to walk off job

Thousands of nurses are set to walk off the job at several of New York City’s largest hospitals on Monday, staging a strike amid an intense flu season.

The action comes three years after a previous strike that compelled some of the same hospitals to move patients elsewhere and reroute ambulances.

Hospital operations are expected to be disrupted at a number of major private institutions, including Mount Sinai in Manhattan, Montefiore medical center in the Bronx, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving medical center.

Close to 15,000 nurses are participating, making it the biggest nurses strike the city has ever seen. Most union members voted last month to authorize the walkout.

Anticipating the possibility of a strike, New York governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency on Friday and urged hospital administrators and union leaders to reach a last-minute agreement. She warned that a strike “could jeopardize the lives of thousands of New Yorkers and patients”.

“I’m strongly encouraging everyone to stay at the table, both sides, management and the nurses, until this is resolved,” Hochul said.

As in the 2023 labor dispute, the current conflict centers on a complex mix of grievances, rebuttals and hospital-specific concerns. Staffing remains a key source of contention, with nurses arguing that well-funded hospitals are unwilling to commit to standards that ensure safe and manageable workloads.

In this round of negotiations, the union is also pressing for limits on hospitals’ use of artificial intelligence, along with enhanced workplace safety protections. In November, a gunman entered Mount Sinai, and earlier this week a man armed with a sharp object barricaded himself inside a Brooklyn hospital room; police ultimately killed both individuals.

The private, non-profit hospitals involved say they have improved staffing since 2023. Some hospital representatives argue that the union’s full slate of demands would be prohibitively costly.

On Friday, dozens of nurses gathered in Manhattan to protest, saying their focus is on patient care and accusing hospital systems, whose top executives earn millions annually, of prioritizing profit and refusing to compromise.

“My hospital tries to cut corners on staffing every day, and then they try to fight historic gains we made three years ago,” Sophie Boland, a pediatric intensive care nurse in the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital system, told the Associated Press.

Hospital officials have described the union’s strike threat as “reckless”. In a statement released on Thursday, they said they would “do whatever is necessary to minimize disruptions”.

Nancy Hagans, the president of the New York State Nurses Association union, has also stressed that patients should not delay care during a potential strike.

Protesters march on the streets around Montefiore medical center during a nursing strike on 11 January 2023 in the Bronx borough of New York City. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

Mount Sinai has hired more than 1,000 temporary nurses and held preparatory drills for a strike that could affect its 1,100-bed main hospital and two affiliates – Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West – with about 500 beds each.

NewYork-Presbyterian said it also had arranged for temporary nurses but, in the event of a strike, some patients might be moved to new rooms or advised to transfer to another facility. Montefiore posted a message assuring patients that appointments would be kept.

The same union mounted a three-day strike at the Mount Sinai flagship facility and Montefiore in 2023, when nurses expressed their sacrifices during the challenging height of the Covid-19 pandemic and the national nurse staffing crisis that followed.

The walkout prompted those hospitals to postpone non-emergency surgeries, tell many ambulances to go elsewhere and transfer some intensive-care infants and other patients. Temporary nurses and even administrators with clinical backgrounds were tapped to fill in, but some patients noticed longer waits and understaffed wards.

The strike ended with an agreement on raises totaling 19% over three years and staffing improvements, including the possibility of extra pay if nurses had to work short-handed. The previous nurses’ contract expired on 31 December.

Now, hospitals are retreating from those guarantees and falling short on other promises, the union says.

Montefiore, for example, agreed to “make all reasonable efforts” to stop keeping some emergency room patients in hallways while they wait for space to open up in other wards. Yet three years later, nurses still scramble to treat “hallway patients”, Michelle Gonzalez, a Montefiore intensive care nurse, told the Associated Press on Friday.

Montefiore has suggested it has made some progress: the hospital told elected officials in a letter in October that there has been a 35% reduction in the time it takes from emergency admission to a clinical unit bed.

Overall, the hospitals say they have greatly reduced nursing job vacancy rates in the last three years, and Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Irving University medical center say they also have added hundreds of nursing positions.

In recent days, several smaller hospitals – including multiple Northwell Health facilities on Long Island – averted potential walkouts by striking deals or making what the union viewed as adequate progress.