A nurses’ strike in New York City entered its second day on Tuesday with some of the city’s major hospitals targeted by the walkout, including NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and the main campus of Mount Sinai Hospital, along with two other major hospitals within the Mount Sinai system. With nearly 15,000 workers involved, it is the largest job action by nurses in the city in decades.
But Mount Sinai is claiming cracks are already appearing in the nurses’ resolve. And union officials, for their part, claimed that one hospital illegally fired three nurses in the hours before the strike as an act of intimidation.
Here’s what to know about the strike:
What are the latest developments?
On Monday night, Mount Sinai Hospital issued a statement that suggested fissures were apparent in the nurses’ ranks. “We had close to 20 percent of our nurses come to work today and put Mount Sinai patients first, and we expect more to do the same tomorrow and in the coming days,” a hospital spokeswoman, Lucia Lee, said in a statement on Monday.
The nurses’ union urged the public to be skeptical of that claim. “We have an overwhelming majority of our members signed up for picket line shifts every single day,” the union, the New York State Nurses Association, said in a statement.
The union, meanwhile, said that Mount Sinai fired three labor and delivery nurses “on a pretextual basis driven by anti-union animus” hours before the strike started, according to a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
In an interview on Tuesday, two of the fired nurses, Liliana Prestia and Berina Selimovic, said that they were falsely accused of keeping medical supplies away from the temporary nurses who had been hired to work during the strike.
The two nurses said they had been simply gathering supplies for an incoming patient, as they often did.
Ms. Prestia and Ms. Selimovic said they were stunned to be fired on Sunday night, three nights after the purported incident. They had never been disciplined before in the three or so years each had worked at Mount Sinai, they said.
“I was taken aback by this, and shocked and disgusted by how Mount Sinai is treating its nurses,” Ms. Selimovic. “I think this was purely intimidation as we were preparing to go on strike.”
In a statement, Mount Sinai accused the nurses of sabotage.
“We terminated three nurses last week for interfering with patient safety by deliberately sabotaging our emergency preparedness drills” ahead of the strike, Mount Sinai said in a statement. “This is completely unacceptable behavior, which included locking critical supplies designed to care for vulnerable newborns in conference rooms where they did not belong.”
Why are the nurses striking?
The nurses have a range of complaints. For years, they have said many hospital units are chronically understaffed, leaving nurses with too many patients to care for all of them properly. But in recent years, the situation improved, partly because of a smaller nursing strike in 2023. More nurses were hired, and new nurse-patient ratios were introduced, with penalties imposed on hospitals if they violated the staffing rules.
But hospitals have sought to challenge those gains, in court and at the bargaining table, according to the nurses’ union.
There are other complaints, too. The nurses are seeking higher pay and demanding that hospitals introduce more security at entrances to reduce workplace violence and the risk of mass shootings. The nurses also want job security guarantees as hospitals expand the use of artificial intelligence in medical settings.
Does patient care deteriorate during a strike?
A lawsuit stemming from the 2023 nurses’ strike in New York City raises that very question.
On the second day of that strike, an infant with a heart condition died in the neonatal intensive care unit at Mount Sinai. A lawsuit brought last year by the baby’s mother claims that Mount Sinai nurses, who were striking, were “inadequately replaced with unexperienced and unqualified nurses.”
In a legal filing, the hospital denied the allegations.
As this week’s strike approached, hospitals that knew they could be affected arranged for the transfer of some especially vulnerable patients — including infants in neonatal intensive care units — to other hospitals.
NewYork-Presbyterian says it has transferred more than 100 patients. Still, the hospital has encouraged patients to continue to come if they need medical care.
“The safety and care of our patients remain our top priorities,” NewYork-Presbyterian said in a statement. “We have taken the necessary steps so our patients continue to receive the care they trust us to provide.”
“All hospitals are open and accepting patients,” the statement said.
The spokeswoman for Mount Sinai, Ms. Lee, said the system’s hospitals and emergency departments remained open. “We expect most appointments will proceed as originally scheduled,” she said.
At Montefiore Medical Center, in the Bronx, hospital officials said that patients continued to be treated.
“We have not canceled even one patient’s access to care,” Dr. Philip O. Ozuah, the president of Montefiore Einstein, which includes the medical center, wrote in a note to employees on Monday.
“Patients are being cared for in a calm, compassionate and collegial atmosphere,” he wrote.
What does the strike mean for patients at the affected hospitals?
NewYork-Presbyterian encouraged patients to show up for scheduled appointments or procedures if they hadn’t been told otherwise. “Your care team will contact you directly if there is any change,” the hospital said in a statement.
If you are a patient at a hospital affected by the strike, it is possible that the hospital will transfer you to another medical center, even if you don’t want to be moved. “If the health care decision maker does not consent to the transfer, the patient may nevertheless be transferred,” read a memo the state Health Department sent to hospitals on Saturday.
What about outpatient centers, clinics and doctors’ practices? Are nurses striking there? Will they be open?
It depends.
Mount Sinai says it has not closed any outpatient facilities or scaled back appointments there to focus on inpatient care during the strike. The hospital said that the strike affected only its three Manhattan hospitals — the main campus, Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West — and not other facilities and offices.
At NewYork-Presbyterian, nurses at some clinics in Washington Heights were on strike along with nurses at the Upper Manhattan hospital.
How long might the strike last?
The last time nurses in New York City went on strike, in January 2023, the walkout lasted three days. The hospitals may have been surprised by that job action: Nurses hadn’t gone on strike in a New York City hospital in 25 years, according to union officials.
And that strike came against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, when health care workers were hailed as heroes.
But the memory of the pandemic has receded for many.
One sign at a rally outside NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia on Monday summed up how many nurses feel they are being treated: “From Hero to Zero.”
The hospitals seem more prepared and resolved this time to fight the nurses’ demands. They are spending tens of millions of dollars on short-term travel nurses. The hospitals, anticipating lean years ahead because of Trump administration policies that will leave New Yorkers uninsured and will reduce federal health care spending in New York by billions of dollars, say they cannot afford to meet the union’s demands. Their top lobbyist has said the union’s leaders are out of touch.
For their part, the nurses point to the huge salaries and payouts that senior leaders at top hospitals have received. The president of NewYork-Presbyterian, for instance, received more than $26 million in total compensation in 2024, according to a recent filing.
Joseph Goldstein covers health care in New York for The Times, following years of criminal justice and police reporting.
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