A nurses’ union in New York City has called on the city’s public hospitals to make a commitment to paying its members salaries that are equal to what they already make in the private sector. This call comes after the union’s members went on strike at two private hospitals in the city.
In a letter that was sent not so long ago to the city’s Health + Hospitals network, the New York State Nurses Association recently detailed their demand.
It is based on contracts that were negotiated with many private hospitals during the previous month that concluded in salary hikes as well as pledges of better staffing.
“We’ll never be able to get nurses to work at H+H,” Nancy Hagans, the head of the union, said to the Daily News on Wednesday. “If you don’t have wage parity between the private sections and the public section, we’ll never be able to attract nurses to work there.”
“After our recent contract victories, the deficit is around $19,000 a year,” said Hagans. “After our recent contract triumphs.”
“And the nurses are trained in the same way, the nurses are taking care of the patients in the same manner, the nurses are working very hard, and they have the same education; therefore, we are scared that these nurses would quit and move into the private sector.”
NYC Nurses Follow Up Private Hospital Strikes By Demanding Pay Parity From City-Owned Health + Hospitals Network
New York Daily News‘s Michael Gartland contributed to this report.
9 February 2023 at 3:40 AM GMT+5:30 approximately 5 minutes to read
A nurses’ union in New York City has called on the city’s public hospitals to make a
commitment to paying its members salaries that are equal to what they already make in the private sector. This call comes after the union’s members went on strike at two private hospitals in the city.
In a letter that was sent not so long ago to the city’s Health + Hospitals network, the New York State Nurses Association recently detailed their demand.
It is based on contracts that were negotiated with many private hospitals during the previous month that concluded in salary hikes as well as pledges of better staffing.
“We’ll never be able to get nurses to work at H+H,” Nancy Hagans, the head of the union, said to the Daily News on Wednesday. “If you don’t have wage parity between the private sections and the public section, we’ll never be able to attract nurses to work there.”
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“After our recent contract victories, the deficit is around $19,000 a year,” said Hagans. “After our recent contract triumphs.” “And the nurses are trained in the same way, the nurses are taking care of the patients in the same manner,
the nurses are working very hard, and they have the same education; therefore, we are scared that these nurses would quit and move into the private sector.”
According to Hagans, anxieties that those hospitals won’t be able to sustain nurse-to-patient staffing ratios put out in the union’s existing pact with the city are being fueled by concerns over fair compensation as well as a mass departure of nurses from the city’s public hospitals.
However, the city is also dealing with the possibility of experiencing significant budget deficits in the years to come.
Even though Mayor Eric Adams has expressed his sympathy for the nurses who went on strike at private hospitals last month, it is uncertain how sympathetic he and his Office of Labor Relations will be to their counterparts at public hospitals given the potential for a financial constraint.
The public hospital network in the city consists of 11 hospitals and dozens of other smaller medical facilities, and the majority of its patients are low-income residents. Some of these hospitals,
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like Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, are the only facility in the surrounding area that are equipped to treat serious trauma or acute mental health disorders, such as gunshot wounds or stab wounds.
Sonia Lawrence, who has worked as a nurse at Lincoln for close to three decades, stated that the nurses she works with are currently making the decision to leave the organisation as a result of the burnout they experienced during the COVID pandemic as well as the new contracts with private hospitals.
Given the legal restrictions that prevent public employees from going on strike, the possibility of a strike is not present in the upcoming contract talks between the union and the city’s public hospital network.
This is in contrast to the negotiations that took place between the union and several private hospitals during the previous month.
However, this was not the case in private hospitals throughout the month of January.
After days of negotiations coming to a stalemate, nurses at two private hospitals in New York City, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, went on strike one month ago.
The strike lasted for several days. Although negotiations were subsequently restarted at both hospitals, which resulted in new contracts, the relatively brief strikes produced turmoil, leaving patients and their families apprehensive about the kind of care they would receive.
Throughout the duration of the strike, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) received an abundance of support, most notably from political leaders such as Mayor Adams, who stated throughout the strike that he was a “strong supporter of the nurses.”
However, given that the mayor’s administration is now being confronted with its own set of requests from the union, it is unclear how he and his team will go moving forward. Both his office’s spokeswoman and H+H’s representative did not provide an instant response to concerns regarding the future contract negotiations.
Adams may take into account the fact that he has in the past supported striking nurses, but he also has to deal with much more widespread financial challenges of his own. Recent assessments of the city’s budget indicate that by the year 2026, the city could face a budget deficit of up to $6.5 billion.
