Expectant Mothers Beware: Don’t Plan to Give Birth at Mount Sinai Hospital

Nurses Plan Strike for Monday Over Salary Increases

Edited by: Fern Sidman

Negotiations to keep about 10,000 New York City nurses from walking off the job headed into a final weekend as some major hospitals were already preparing Friday for a potential strike by sending ambulances elsewhere and transferring some patients, including vulnerable newborns, as was reported by the AP.

CNN reported that the five New York City hospitals set for the nursing strike Monday are Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Montefiore, BronxCare and Flushing Hospital Medical Center.

They and a handful of other hospitals are bargaining with nurses who want raises and an end to what they say are untenable staffing squeezes, nearly three years into the coronavirus pandemic.

Mount Sinai Hospital’s dispute with its nurses could leave expectant mothers with their own labor troubles. Some Mount Sinai doctors are being told to take their patients to Lenox Hill Hospital or NYU Langone when they go into labor. The famed New York City hospital is moving newborns in their intensive care unit to other hospitals ahead of the planned nursing strike, CNN reported.

“We have NICU infants being transferred to area hospitals today because of the strike notice,” a Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN. “We are seeking a resolution. The impact is great.”

“New York City hospitals have violated our trust through years of understaffing, and that understaffing has only gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Nancy Hagans, the president of the New York States Nurses Association said at a news briefing Friday, according to the AP report. “It’s time they come to the table and deliver the safe staffing standards that nurses and our patients deserve.”

She added, “Our main goal in these negotiations is to improve patient care, to save staffing and fair wages, to recruit and retain nurses, “ as was reported by CNN. The union said it doesn’t know if Mount Sinai management plans to negotiate over the weekend.

Mount Sinai’s chief nursing officer, Fran Cartwright, acknowledged nurses are stretched thin, the AP reported. But she pointed to the pandemic’s disruptive sweep through people’s working lives, at bedsides and beyond.

“Our nurses are working with patients 24/7, so they’re feeling it, and I’m feeling it with them,” she said in an interview, the AP reported. “It takes years after a pandemic to add stability.”

After shouldering health risks and huge workloads at the peak of the virus crisis, the profession is facing burnout that has driven many nurses into other jobs, or at least away from full-time hospital work, the AP reported.

NYSNA has announced tentative agreements with three other New York City hospitals after giving the hospitals a 10-day warning of an impending strike, CNN reported.

Mount Sinai’s spokesperson said in a statement to reporters that it is “dismayed by NYSNA’s reckless actions, adding that “the union is jeopardizing patients’ care, and it’s forcing valued Mount Sinai nurses to choose between their dedication to patient care and their own livelihoods,” as was reported by CNN.

Hagans, however, had strong words for Mount Sinai at Friday’s reporter briefing.

“Nurses are frustrated. We are holding the line for better staffing and salaries,” Hagans said, as was reported by CNN.  “The bosses there have repeatedly broken their promises on staffing. Our safe staffing standards are routinely violated and management gaslight the nurses when we try to enforce our current contract. There are still hundreds of nursing vacancies the administration needs to fill. Shame! And shame on Sinai for walking out on the bargaining last night,” she said.

The Mount Sinai spokesperson did not comment on Hagan’s statement about management walking away from talks, CNN reported. The hospital said the deal put forth at Thursday evening’s bargaining session was the same one that NYSNA has agreed to with union nurses at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. CNN also reported that tentative agreements have also been reached with union nurses at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island.

The AP reported that Mount Sinai said it offered a three-year series of pay raises totaling 19%, matching what the union recently achieved in tentative contract agreements reached with some other hospitals.

Cartwright said the talks hit a roadblock when management tried to move on to staffing and the union still wanted to discuss salaries, according to the AP report. She said management was ready to resume talks once the union was willing to address other issues.

Cartwright also said the flagship was “heartbroken” about having to transfer patients, particularly the infants, but would ensure the right care for them and patients who remain, as was reported by the AP.

“Still, NYSNA refuses to back off its plan to strike on Monday, even though it has called off planned strikes at other New York City hospitals,” the Mount Sinai spokesperson said, according to the CNN report, “It’s not reasonable for NYSNA to ask for a significant wage increase above and beyond these other sites.”

Hagans said the tentative agreements increase salaries and conditions for nurses, which will help recruit and retain enough staff to deal with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and other patient care needs.

CNN reported that the union president added that “we are hoping” to come to a deal for the remaining hospitals ahead of Monday to avoid strike action, which would begin 6 am ET Monday if tentative deals are not reached by 11:59 pm Sunday.

The AP reported that negotiations also continued at Montefiore and the roughly 850-bed BronxCare Health System, while Flushing Hospital Medical Center reached a tentative agreement with nurses Friday evening. Spokespeople for the union and for Flushing Hospital, a 300-bed facility in Queens, confirmed the deal. The union said it included boosts in staffing, plus the same raises — as do the other tentative contracts.

Nurses at a Massachusetts hospital went on strike for nearly 10 months ending last January, marking the longest nursing walkout in state history, the AP reported. Thousands of nurses at two California hospitals were on strike for a week in May.

BronxCare said Thursday it was confident about eventually reaching an agreement, while Montefiore Senior Vice President Joe Solmonese said nurses were rejecting a “generous” offer, the AP reported.  He said it mirrored raises the union had agreed to elsewhere, while also adding 78 more emergency room nurses and making other increases in pay, benefits and staffing.

On December 30th — a day before their contracts expired — the nurses gave 10 days’ notice of an intended strike, as was reported by the AP.  Such notice is legally required so hospitals have time to line up temporary replacements.

One big medical center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, reached a tentative agreement with the union the next day. The AP reported that Maimonides and Richmond University medical centers struck tentative deals Wednesday. The union said Maimonides nurses voted Friday to ratify their deal, which Hagans called “the best contract that we have ever had.”

The nurses are pressing for commitments to what they consider gold-standard staffing levels, such as having at least one nurse for each of the sickest patients in intensive care, and one nurse to about four patients in a typical medical-surgical unit, according to the AP report.

Meanwhile, negotiations also are ongoing with four Brooklyn private hospitals. Nurses there have yet to authorize a strike, though votes are in progress, Hagans said, as was reported by the AP.