After more than four weeks on the picket line, striking members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) have arrived at a tentative agreement on new contracts.
If NYSNA members vote to accept the agreements this week, the historic nurses’ strike will finally come to an end for at least 10,500 nurses. Members will vote on whether to ratify the contracts and could return to work this week.
The nurses’ union said it has reached tentative agreements covering its most pressing issues: maintaining enforceable safe staffing standards and increasing the number of nurses to enhance patient care; protecting health benefits from drastic cuts threatened by hospitals; ensuring safety from workplace violence; safeguarding the rights of immigrant and trans patients and nurses; and securing protections against artificial intelligence in their contracts for the first time.
The agreements include a 12% salary increase over three years to help recruit and retain nurses, efforts to oppose efforts to weaken healthcare and staffing, and a commitment to return all nurses to work after ratification.
The pact also includes new protections against workplace violence, including specific protections for transgender and immigrant nurses and patients as well as safeguards against artificial intelligence, the union said.
NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane said, “Nurses sacrificed their own pay and healthcare while on strike to defend patient care for all of New York. We helped galvanize a movement for worker and healthcare justice that reached beyond New York City.”
The agreement could settle the dispute between some 10,500 NYSNA members and New York City-area private hospitals like Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside and West. A Montefiore spokesperson confirmed the tentative agreement exists but said they cannot provide further details until the nurses ratify it by Wednesday’s vote. Meanwhile, some 4,200 nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian remain on strike, back on the picket line today.
The tentative agreements were reached late Sunday/early Monday morning.
Nurses will vote on the tentative contracts between Feb. 9 and 11. If the contracts are accepted, NYSNA members will return to work by Saturday, Feb. 14.
— With reporting from The Associated Press
I hear that three nurses who were fired by email without a hearing are not being reinstated. I heard their reinstatement was on the table, but they were a discarded bargaining chip. The nurses will lose their licenses and an appeal will take years. What about THEM?