By Claudia Gohn
At eight on a freezing Friday morning, dozens of nurses and local supporters gathered in front of Mount Sinai Morningside hospital for the fifth day of New York City’s largest nurses strike in history. They huddled around a marshal (one of the leaders of the picket) who asked: “What are we doing about getting more folks out here? Are you in your unit chats, making sure people are coming out?”
As they marched back and forth in front of the hospital doors on Amsterdam between West 114th and 113th streets, they shook noisemakers and shouted “Safe staffing saves lives!” Some held signs saying “Mount Sinai Unfair!” and “Don’t Mess With Our Benefits.” Many wore bright red beanies, scarves, and headband ear warmers with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) logo on them.
The nurses walk the picket line in four hour shifts, the marshal said. Hot coffee and breakfast pastries were provided Friday morning to keep protesters warm and fed, and a bus with the heat cranked up parked on the block, for brief respites of warmth.
The Mount Sinai Morningside strikers are among nearly 15,000 nurses on picket lines across the city – many of whom gather daily at several hospital locations run by Mount Sinai, New York-Presbyterian, and Montefiore.
The nurses in NYSNA who work at those hospitals have been without a contract since December 31, after their demands were not met during negotiations. Demands include safe staffing, workplace violence protections, safeguards against the use of AI in healthcare, and fair healthcare benefits.
Nurses that West Side Rag spoke with outside Mount Sinai Morningside said they didn’t see another option. “The three big hospital systems pretty much coordinated together to offer us a ridiculous, absolutely insulting package, which – we would note – it was obvious we would refuse,” said Jonathan Hunter, a nurse of nearly two decades who is part of the Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West nurses’ negotiating committee. “They really didn’t do any negotiation during the last six months at all.”
The protesters’ chants and bells in front of Mount Sinai Morningside could be heard from blocks away by Friday afternoon. Cars and buses blasted their horns as they drove by, prompting cheers from the picketers.
“We’re holding up. We really feel strongly about our healthcare,” said Jaime Bowser, who has worked at the Morningside hospital for five years in the adult psychiatry unit. The nurses say one of their key issues is maintaining the health care coverage they have. “It’s good. We want to keep it,” said Bowser. “They’re trying to take it away from us. It’s imperative that we have it.”
According to the Mount Sinai nurses, changes proposed by management include redefining visits to doctors at the hospital where they work as out of network, meaning they would pay more for treatment there. “We are [exposed to] a lot of different kinds of diseases … If they change our plan, the nurses will have to pay a lot and will have to suffer [from these] problems,” said Shella Dominguez, a nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside.
On Friday afternoon, Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West (at 10th Avenue and West 59th Street) hospital locations – which share a contract – went into new negotiations with Mount Sinai management. But after hours at the table, those talks ended with no agreement.
In a press release published on the first day of the strike, Mount Sinai stated that the striking nurses refused “to move on from [their] extreme economic demands, which we cannot agree to.” The hospital confirmed that it had hired 1,400 nurses to work in place of the strikers “for as long as this strike lasts.” (Those nurses are reported to be receiving $9,000 per week to cross the picket line.)
An Instagram reel posted to the Mount Sinai account at the start of the strike features the company’s CEO, Brendan Carr, saying “Walking through the hospital today, you could feel a sense of loss. You could feel that a key team member was missing, and you could feel that our team was divided.”
Divided, with each side in the bargaining accusing the other of spreading misinformation about details of the issues at stake. A lengthy press update from Mount Sinai on Friday gave the hospital’s version of “myths” versus “facts,” while on the picket line nurses disputed many of its statements – including Mount Sinai’s assertion that 20 percent of scheduled nurses still came in to work on the first day of the strike.
Despite the tensions there is still joy and community on the picket line. Throughout the first week of the strike, the Mount Sinai Morningside and West locations both kept energy up by bringing bands and speakers to play loud and energetic music. There were even occasional karaoke breaks.
This is not the first time city nurses have gone on strike, and some of the issues of the past are present again – like the nurses’ demand for safe staffing, referring to the ratio of patients to a single nurse. Elizabeth Hanover, a nurse in a surgical trauma unit at Mount Sinai Morningside, for example, takes care of five or six patients during her shift but says the number should be four or fewer, at least for her unit.
“They’re getting antibiotics all night. They have to use the bathroom and walk and we need to make sure that we keep them safe, too,” said Hanover. “So if we have five patients and we’re trying to do everything at once for one patient, there’s a bunch of tasks for one, the next one’s just waiting for the next task and it’s just going from one room to another.”
Multiple unions and organizations – including the Democratic Socialists of America – and local neighbors, including some former patients, came out to support the Morningside nurses. Armand Cruz, an intensive care unit nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside, said the strike and the union’s demands have an impact on the Upper West Side community.
“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when each of us ends up in a hospital like Mount Sinai,” he said. “And we can decide, in this time, what can we expect when that day comes, when it’s time for us to be patients. Do we want an overworked, understaffed, and underpaid team of nurses to try to take care of us, or do we want the contrary to that?”
It’s unclear how long this strike will continue. A 2023 strike at Montefiore hospitals and Mount Sinai in East Harlem only lasted 72 hours, but this one, now a week old, with one failed negotiating session, feels more contentious, say the nurses.
“It made a lot of us feel like they don’t value nursing. And like I said, nurses, they were the backbone. We all work as a team,” said Nataki Jarrett-Henry, an emergency department nurse at Mount Sinai West, about the unsuccessful negotiations on Friday.
Even so, Jarrett-Henry said she remains optimistic and hopes to be back inside taking care of patients soon. But for now, even a dismal weekend of rain and snow did not stop the picket line, where nurses continued their protest, their red hats polka-dotted with snowflakes.
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The nurses are fighting against the State for more money and benefits, yet mayor Mamdani, who literally represents the State, has sided with the nurses (to prove his sophomoric “class warrior” bonafides). He’s literally fighting against himself (and NY taxpayers will of course ultimately be screwed). Rookie move.
Last time I looked, Mamdani was mayor of New York City, not a “literal” (or even figurative) representative of the State. He’s right to stand up for the nurses, who are a vital part of the city.
The nurses aren’t fighting the state for more money. They are fighting with the administration of their workplaces. The HOSPITALS.They are also fighting to keep you safe from neglect and injury. Think on these things
These hospital systems are private, non profit systems, not owned by the state. NYS has nothing to do with salaries/benefits to the nurses. The state should be on site at these hospitals to assure that patients are not being harmed as a result of decreased staffing. This strike is not only about money, but nurse patient ratios are a key component, Mt Sinai has been egregious in not maintaining staffing levels as negotiated in the previous contract and has paid out almost 4 million in fines.
A huge portion of the hospitals are paid by state programs (ie Medicaid) and their workers are represented by unions who are extensively enmeshed in state government.
Seem like the hospital rather pay the fines. Fines should be increased
Illustrative scenario: a group of men is attacking a woman when another man comes to her aid; therefore, the man is fighting against himself — right?
Mamdani represents the workers in this town, of which are an overwhelming amount of nurses. People besides high income earners pay taxes too, thus, we are all in effect tax payers. As a fellow tax payer, I am with the nurses.
When 45% of the city is on Medicaid, looks like at least 45% of the city get from the government than they pay in taxes. Add to that government employees and employees of non for profits that get most of their money from the government, and it looks like only a small proportion of New Yorkers actually pays for everyone else. (This is not to imply that teachers or policemen are not providing a valuable service, it’s just their interests are not always aligned with the taxpayers who pay their salaries.)
Mamdani is consistently on the side of workers as he is here. It’s not a “rookie move” to show consistency and not be a hypocrite.
Nurses are asking for a 25 to 40 percent raise resulting in a 160000 to 275000 salary that will have them making as much or more money than most primary care doctors. Average for a primary care doctor is around 200000 (and they also have significantly more student loan debt). That salary demand will not only force an inequitable pay structure within the organization, but will also cause an already financially strained system to make even more cost cutting measures that will stress all other workers, unionized and non-unionized, who are not nurses. Before we jump to the “we stand with the oppressed workers” it might not be a bad idea to wonder about the effects these demands will have on the entire healthcare system.
Maybe tell the ceos to decrease their $26 millions and bonuses to compensate the employees and deficit. And stop increasing their salaries from 13% to 70%. And Respect your hard working nurses.
If you completely get rid of the CEOs and majority of senior management salaries, you would still only save a small fraction of the cost of what NYSNA is demanding.
Stop repeating the hospitals’ untruthful press releases.
But what if some agree with the content of these press releases? Are we still allowed to not share the left and pro labor opinions around here?
Not sure why so many people like you lack empathy these days. Our doctors, nurses, radiologists, and so on are the front line workers that take care of our communities. Is it ok for ceos and other management to make millions, not deal with direct patient care, and get full benefits? Maybe the amount is a lot but at the end of the day I would rather the money go to the front line staff than corporate paper pushers. We need to take care of the people who take care of us and that means safer staffing ratios, protection against violence, and full health benefits.
That is so true !! The public was not clapping at 7 pm for CEO’s !! How quickly we forget.
Of course, why even bother having CEOs, right? Say someone who surely never ran a business or work a single day in the private sector…
Incorrect info. What’s your source?
I’m a nurse at St Luke’s Morningside and long time resident of the UWS. I care for many patients from our community that I see repeatedly, and have gotten to know as they come in over the years for exacerbations of chronic conditions.
If your numbers were correct, I’d be getting a 33.33% raise!!!!! (I make $120k). That would be that absolutely amazing, but alas, it’s simply not true. Nurses salaries are visible and posted, so feel free to check the “oppressed workers” salaries.
What nurses really want is safety.
1.) Safety for our patients, with mandatory safe staffing ratios. When none of your patients walk, or are on oxygen, and often coming back from procedures which bleeding and vitals need to be monitored for every 15 minutes, it’s imperative to have an adequate ratio of patients to nurses. Sometimes, a patient just needs a tissue, but sometimes it’s an actual emergency and often patients don’t have family with them to alert of those ABC emergencies.
2.) Safety for nurses. I’d guess 90% of nurses have either been verbally or physically abused. I had enough and left a unit when a patient threw a full urinal at my head. Whatever the case of why these actions are happening, nurses need protections against violence in the workplace.
3.) Safety for our health. Right now, we don’t have healthcare. As of our contract expiring, so did our healthcare. I routinely walk into isolation rooms where patients need my help and care as they have the flu, Covid, C diff, etc etc. I have patients with bed bugs, lice, roaches and even maggots.
We 100% need to fix healthcare in this country. And with President Trump’s BBB, many of our fellow New Yorkers won’t have health insurance. We should looking at the root cause of this problem for answer, not blaming nurses.
wrong. You know how health insurance works with the union. It’s some of the best. If you have a concern, look at some of the private health insurance policies. They work. There are few of them out there, will be more in the future. Take a look, premiums are lower, most of your health care practitioners are in the network. You own your insurance, not the employer.
This is not true. The nurses are fighting for ICE out of the hospitals, workplace violence protections (there aren’t even weapons detectors), no roll back of nurse/patient ratios(Mount Sinai is trying to roll back ratios agreed upon three years ago) and continued healthcare coverage, which the hospitals are trying to end.
Read the contracts proposed by the union. They are demanding all of the above AND a 33% salary increase the same year Medicaid is getting defunded. People keep saying take away the CEO’s pay but even if you divide their entire pay by the n amount of nurses striking it’s like 3k for each nurse – less than what the hospitals offered them initially. Personally I don’t want my own healthcare costs to go up and I think that the 4% annual raises proposed to them by the hospitals was perfectly fine all things considered. Yes I understand their job is hard but so is everyone’s.
More Sinai press release here. Not true
And fair schedule to avoid burnout
I’ve seen this PR vetted script posted word for word on many different platforms from TikTok to the NYPost. I’ll give it to you guys, you are making a strong effort to undermine the nurses, but until you’ve actually worked as a nurse, everything you’re saying is just consternation and hyperbole.
That is a straight out lie. You did not read my comments anywhere else. I am not involved at all in this dispute. But I did read the demands, did some math, and commented. The opinions are mine and mine alone. You on the other hand, are spreading falsehoods. I am actually speaking on behalf of patients. And as you have lied and attacked my integrity, let me speak a hard truth out loud. I spent nearly a month recently in the hospital and while 10 percent of the nursing staff were angels on earth – I say again, ANGELS on earth – a significant majority were entitled, bullies, rude to patients and visitors, and hostile to doctors and staff. So many nurses made my life more difficult, not less. And I am a quiet, nice old retired man who tries to treat everyone with dignity and respect. I had a traumatic experience at the hospital, not from my illness but from the treatment I received from certain abusive nurses. From my own personal experiences, I have concluded that the current generation of nurses are a serious problem in healthcare, and giving into these demands will only grant them even more power than they already have. Hospitals already are powerless to make improvements in care as it is. From one patient’s experiences, I think nurses as a group are a problem in the system that need not not be enabled further, let alone rewarded. Their demands will raise healthcare costs in a time when all of us are struggling. And that is not some PR coming from the secretive society of fat cat management. It comes from the people you purport to serve.
They are probably paid by management to come on the various platforms and diss nurses
Can someone explain why nurses are wamt ” safeguards against the use of AI in healthcare”? It seems to me that healthcare is a great use of AI. It can read MRIs and CTs to find things humans miss, it can look at all your tests and point to underlying conditions a specialist in one area may have missed.
ok, here it is. As a retired RN, I’ll spell it out for you. Columbia Presbyterian is using AI robots as a replacement for nurses. It’s a pilot program but apparently is very successful. Do you want an AI to hold your hand if you are afraid or to hold your newborn or do you want human warmth and compassion? Leave it to Columbia to replace the one thing that is best for patients. A robot does NOT Take place of the specialists with their years of training. AI can be used as a supplement, a doublecheck, not an MD. Who is going to pay for these services? Insurance will not cover robodocs, do you want to pay huge costs for these robodocs AND pay for health insurance?
You must go to fantastic hospitals to experience nurses who hold your hand with human warmth and compassion…
I was an RN and I did. I held babies in the NICU as they crossed the rainbow bridge, tried to console the mommies and daddies. I watched as oncology patients lost their fight and hugged them. . Thanks for asking
So you agree there is a place for AI in medical care. If it can do some tasks, and do them faster than humans, and then have it double checked by a human, isn’t that a good thing? Why would insurance not pay for this once it is out of the testing phase?
because insurance will not pay high rates for services by a fake person. The human staff is what keeps patients safe. We are not going to waste our time double checking what an AI does when we can save time and money doing it right ourselves. It’s all about liability. And as a place for AI< we already use robotic surgeries which help improve surgical outcomes but the surgeon, nurses and anesthesiologist perform the surgery, not the AI. All staff and the insurance companies have high liability with healthcare. If you all want lower premiums, stop using layers that sue at the drop of a hat. It's the liability that cripples healthcare, not the insurance companies. They would lower their premiums if people didn't look to sue all the time
Mt SInai has said they are putting 100 million into AI, but they have no money for RNs, including their contracted contribution to health care and pensions. But think about it, AI can be used in an ICU to monitor your vital signs, identify abnormalities and notify and MD, All without anyone touching a patient. If you’ve ever been in an ICU the isolation, drugs, machines wreck havoc with a patient’s mental state and nurses are the ones who physically touch, talk and soothe patients. So more AI, less RNs
With AI, nurses would have more time to do thise things. And there could be fewer nurses. This would lower healthcare cksts for all of us.
I suugest you see a bot when you want health care. I’ll stick with humans in all our limited capacities.
I think what is missing from this article is that Mt Sinai is no longer in the Anthem network, and that their nursing staff is insured by Anthem thru the NYSNA benefit fund. So for the thousands of nurses employed by this system, visits to Mt Sinai MD are considered out of network. This is an indication of how Mt Sinai treats their professional nursing staff with disdain. Not only that, Mt Sinai has repeatedly disregarded staffing ratios as negotiated in the previous contract and has paid out over 3million in fines.
Mt Sinai resident physicians also have Anthem and lost coverage in the Mt Sinai system. It’s not just the nurses
I went to MSH MDs when I worked there.. everyone always said the health insurance was so great, but how good could it be if MSH MDs don’t even take it??? I lost my job over a vaccine which left the hospital short 500 RNs.. well, this is Karma in a big way! What ever it cost the hospital, even if it burns itself financially to the ground, MSH deserves it. I have a jacket with the year of the nurse on it.. 2021… shortly after we got the jackets we were out the door. Lauded heros one day and out with the trash the next. Oh and if they can pay RNs $9000 a week to cross a picket line, they can give those who are left a raise. They’ve been abused with impossible work loads for years.
Im not sure that they did that on purpose. Anthem is a huge healthcare provider – I’m not a nurse and we also lost mt Sinai coverage like everyone else on Anthem,
Nurses are asking for the moon with unrealistic salary increases in already cash strapped hospitals that are facing further massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and federal cuts this year. The federal government slashed billions to healthcare. Mount Sinai Morningside operates at a loss (that is why Columbia, then NYU, got rid of it). This would have settles a long time ago, if salary increase requests were reasonable. Many of the physicians make far less than many of the nurses, working double, triple the hours.
Sounds like more Sinai press release distortions
So do you dispute the claims or just lable them as “press releases?” I mean tell us what your posiiton is. What salary increases is being askd for? Does Sinai Morningside operate at a loss and if so what would the impact be on it from such increases? And how many hours annd days a week does a nurse work?
Does anyone have recommendations of how neighbors can support those walking the picket line? Can we bring food or supplies directly to them? What sort of things would be appreciated?
You can join them. You can also go to the NYSNA website to sign a letter to the hospital CEOs, or make a strike fund donation.
You can support our nurses here:
https://www.nysna.org/news/take-action-support-nyc-nurses-strike
I’d like to congratulate the nurses for showing us that peaceful and orderly 1st Amendment protests are still possible in 2026.
I really really hope the strike ends soon and the hospitals negotiate with the union. I love the article buo do not understand t this part: “Multiple unions and organizations – including the Democratic Socialists of America – and local neighbors, including some former patients, came out to support the Morningside nurses”
Why would it be of note that the DSA is out in support of the nurses? Like I think it would be more le if the Republican Party would be,, but isn’t it a given that the DSA would be?
I completely support the nurses. Unfortunately, because we live near wretched Mt. Sinai Morningside, a.k.a. St. Luke’s which, when we were in college at Columbia and Barnard, we knew that unless you were dying, you would not go there, my husband is always taken there when he has an emergency. Even though their ER is a hell hold, the nurses try their best, but there simply are not enough of them.
⸻
Support NY Nurses’ Fight for a FAIR CONTRACT
New York nurses are not striking simply for higher pay. That narrative is misleading and incomplete.
Nurses are demanding safe patient ratios (not 1 RN caring for 8 or more patients), protection against workplace violence for both patients and staff, and the preservation of existing health and pension benefits. These are basic standards necessary to ensure safe, high-quality patient care and a sustainable nursing workforce.
Hospitals such as Mount Sinai, NYP, and Montefiore are pushing to cut health and pension benefits, refusing to commit to safe staffing ratios, and failing to provide adequate protection against workplace violence—even as nurses are assaulted on the job every day. These decisions put both patients and nurses at risk.
Rather than investing in bedside care, safety, and retention, hospital leadership is choosing to cut costs by understaffing units, removing health and pension benefits, and ignoring workplace safety—while management compensation continues to grow by millions. This prioritizes profit over patient safety and frontline workers’ well-being.
Nurses want to provide excellent, safe care. They are fighting for:
• Safe staffing that protects patients
• Protection from workplace violence
• Fair wages and maintained health and pension benefits
This is about patient safety, dignity, and fairness, not greed.
📢 Stand with NY nurses. Support a FAIR contract that puts patients and healthcare workers first.
The nurses are striking for safe staff to patient ratios and recovering benefits that were changed. I am not sure how pressing pay is. But I will say that you can talk to any friend or relative who is a nurse and you will know that every day is understaffed, potentially unsafe and they fear losing their license. My daughter comes home from her 13 hour shift with her lunch bag still filled as they rarely get a moment to eat (and if they do it is time away from their patients and that is unsettling, what can happen when your eyes are off the floor).
For every living person in the US this is true..unless you go straight to the morgue, chances are at some time you will be on the receiving end of insufficient staffing, unsafe practices and a caretaker who is stretched beyond what is safe. This affects every person or their loved ones. This should matter to you !
Nurses have regular scheduled breaks during which they are covered by another nurse, not sure why your daughter doesn’t have time to eat.
I’d genuinely love to know what fantasy world you think we’re working in. Let me explain what “covered by another nurse” actually looks like in real life.
You start with your own assignment: say, five patients. Before you even attempt to take your “scheduled break,” you scramble to make sure your patients need absolutely nothing, because the coworker covering you will now have ten patients. Ten. And the entire time you’re gone, you’re silently praying that none of those ten patients decompensate. When the code blue alarm goes off, your first thought is, “Please don’t be my patient.” And even if it isn’t, we still jump up and leave our food behind to help, because a code means all hands on deck. There’s no blissfully enjoying lunch because staffing is so generous. It doesn’t work that way.
And in the PICU, it’s even more unrealistic. I have one or two critically ill patients, some of whom I literally cannot leave for extended periods due to the constant monitoring and interventions they require. So how, exactly, is my coworker, who also has one or two critically ill patients, supposed to safely cover two to four additional patients during my lovely “regularly scheduled break”?
We care about our patients’ safety, so we often skip our own breaks to make sure they get the care they need and deserve. It’s not like extra nurses magically appear during lunch hours to take over assignments without putting patient safety at risk.
This comment is wildly ignorant and honestly, quite disturbing.
The nurses are asking for 40% raises, metal detector at every entrance, security guards on every floor, free health care, no use of AI, etc. This is why it hasn.t settled.
Trying to have this debate in our highly progressive borderline socialist neighborhood is pointless. Hopefully the hospitals will just fire all these people and hire or even better outsource new ones.
Nurses fighting AI and robotics reminds me the cab drivers fighting uber and credit card payment terminals… You adapt or your die. Either way, just be quiet.
$9,000 a week to cross the picket line???? Pretty sure the nurse’s weren’t negotiating for that much!!!!!!!