More than 10,000 nurses who have been on strike for a month will return to work at two major New York City hospital systems after voting to approve a new contract. But more than 4,000 strikers were still holding out for a better deal.
On Wednesday, the nurses’ union, the New York State Nurses Association, announced that members at Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital, along with two other medical centers in the Mount Sinai system, had ratified the tentative deal, which includes salary increases and modest improvements to nurse staffing levels.
But nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital voted against the proposal and said that they were prepared to carry on their strike, which began Jan. 12. Beth Loudin, a neonatal nurse and union leader at NewYork-Presbyterian, said that the proposed deal did not include sufficient protections against layoffs, nor would it put enough new nurses into understaffed units.
“Those are the two things we needed,” said Ms. Loudin, who heads the bargaining committee for the nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia.
“More than 4,200 nurses remain on an unfair labor practice strike at NewYork-Presbyterian,” the union said in a statement.
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