Thousands of New York City nurses are returning to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city's leading hospital systems entered its second day with no signs of an end. On Monday, the city's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union's members for seeking "dignity, respect, and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve."
"There is no shortage of wealth in the health care industry," he said, per ABC7. "The CEO of Montefiore made more than $16 million last year. The CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian made $26 million. But too many nurses can't make ends meet." The walkout, which comes during a severe flu season, involves roughly 15,000 nurses spread out across multiple private hospitals, including NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center, and Mount Sinai hospital. The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap, reports the AP, with both nurses and hospital administrators urging patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.
The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances. As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for manageable, safe workloads. The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they've made strides in staffing in recent years, and have cast the union's demands as prohibitively expensive.
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