The email extract continued, “I spent time chatting with both patients on my rounds this morning. They’re sitting up in chairs, smiling, talking, and grateful to all of you!! And I saw a 3rd patient that is about to go in for his double lung transplant surgery this afternoon… Another day, another miracle. Many thanks to our amazing teams, our most complex and exacting mission continues…providing life-saving care.”
On Jan. 12, the first day of the strike, several hundred nurses packed the sidewalk outside the Weiler campus as metal barricades separated the striking nurses and a handful of Montefiore security guards. NYPD officers in a police van watched the demonstration from across the street. One woman held a homemade sign that had a cut-out of Hochul that said, “STATE OF EMERGENCY, BUT STILL NO SAFE STAFFING?” Several others in the crowd held a seemingly professionally made sign that read, “FAIR CONTRACT for Patients and Nurses.”
STRIKING NURSES ARE seen outside Montefiore’s Einstein campus located on Eastchester Road in the Morris Park section of The Bronx on Jan. 12, 2026. They are seeking better patient / nurse staffing ratios, increased pay, and health care.
Photo by David Greene
Several other striking nurses held large billboards with a photo of Ozuah, alleging he has been given a 125% pay increase since 2020. Meanwhile, NYSNA had a truck with an electric billboard circling the block in front of CHAM and the Moses campus, displaying messages to the public.
Erica, a nurse at the Moses campus who only started her nursing career a year and a half ago, said, “I was inspired by the nurses that went on strike in 2023, and I know that those same strong nurses are here today fighting for our patients, and fighting for safe staffing, and fighting for this community to be a healthier place.”
Erica alleged the Moses’ emergency room had 145,369 patients in 2024, or 16 patients an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “And we have a very small ER,” she said. “We’re asking for one of the proposals that we want is a holding area, so patients aren’t waiting 40, 50 hours for a bed upstairs. They’re not in crowded conditions, not waiting in the hallway. It’s very difficult to care for patients when they’re packed in like sardines, and that’s what we want. We want to be able to care for our patients properly.”
In response, when contacted, Montefiore said on Jan. 16, “At our Moses campus, for patients who are ‘treat and release,’ meaning they don’t need to be admitted, [the] length of stay in the emergency dept has lessened by nearly half an hour since 2023…..and for patients who need to be admitted to the hospital from the ED at our Moses campus, the time after “admission” in the emergency dept, where they receive inpatient care to a bed on a clinical floor has been reduced by 35% since 2023.”
We asked if Erica thought the hospital was negotiating in good faith. “I don’t believe so,” she said. “I’ve watched the negotiations. I’ve sat in on several of them, and they’re calling us unrealistic and it’s unfair to say the quality care that we want for our patients is unrealistic.”
Given NYS Department of Health (NYSDOH) reported that for the week ending Dec. 20, 2025, there were over 32,000 positive cases of the ‘flu in New York City, and more than 128,000 positive ‘flu cases in New York City this season, Norwood News asked Erica what the emergency room looked like before she left. “We’re in the peak season right now,” she said. “The last time I worked, we had 180 patients in the ER, and it’s a space for 75 or 80, and we had 180 patients.”
In reference to NYSNA’s strike demands, when contacted, Montefiore alleged on Jan. 16 that nurses were demanding a 40% wage increase, “based on their 10% per year-over-year demand for three years, plus incremental step increases.” The hospital added, “And that is just on salary, when you add up all the things they are asking it becomes a cost of $3.6 Billion over the life of the contract.”
The Montefiore spokesperson said on Jan. 16 that to put that in context, a new, full-time RN coming out of nursing school makes a base salary of $119,423. “By the end of the proposed 3-year contract, a brand-new, full time RN coming out of nursing school would make $156,000 base salary [approximately],” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson went on to say on Jan. 16 that if benefits such as 100% healthcare coverage, life insurance, etc. are included, the cost for a new RN out of nursing school is roughly $170,000. The spokesperson said by the end of the contract, the cost would be around $206,000. He said the exact cost was harder to know as healthcare costs and other costs are likely to go up but it’s unknown by how much.
Montefiore said the average base salary of the average NYSNA RN at Montefiore goes from $165,000 today to $220,000 base salary at the end of the contract, and this does not include any benefits.
The spokesperson went on to say on Jan. 16, “Every day this week, we have provided seamless, compassionate care in a healing and safe environment. Our best-in-class security protocol includes, widespread deployment of weapons detection capabilities, paying for round-the-clock armed members of the NYPD, well-trained internal security personnel, and issuing wearable panic buttons to our nurses.”