{"id":104674,"date":"2026-01-19T14:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T14:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/104674\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T14:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T14:23:08","slug":"a-glimpse-inside-the-largest-nurses-strike-in-nyc-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/104674\/","title":{"rendered":"A Glimpse Inside the Largest Nurses Strike in NYC History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nurses on strike last Friday outside Mount Sinai Morningside hospital. Photos by Claudia Gohn<\/p>\n

By Claudia Gohn\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s largest nurses strike in history. They huddled around a marshal (one of the leaders of the picket) who asked: \u201cWhat are we doing about getting more folks out here? Are you in your unit chats, making sure people are coming out?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cSafe staffing saves lives!\u201d Some held signs saying \u201cMount Sinai Unfair!\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Mess With Our Benefits.\u201d Many wore bright red beanies, scarves, and headband ear warmers with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) logo on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Mount Sinai Morningside strikers are among nearly 15,000 nurses on picket lines across the city \u2013 many of whom gather daily at several hospital locations run by Mount Sinai, New York-Presbyterian, and Montefiore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nurses that West Side Rag spoke with outside Mount Sinai Morningside said they didn\u2019t see another option. \u201cThe three big hospital systems pretty much coordinated together to offer us a ridiculous, absolutely insulting package, which \u2013 we would note \u2013 it was obvious we would refuse,\u201d said Jonathan Hunter, a nurse of nearly two decades who is part of the Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West nurses\u2019 negotiating committee. \u201cThey really didn\u2019t do any negotiation during the last six months at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The protesters\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re holding up. We really feel strongly about our healthcare,\u201d 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. \u201cIt\u2019s good. We want to keep it,\u201d said Bowser. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to take it away from us. It\u2019s imperative that we have it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. \u201cWe are [exposed to] a lot of different kinds of diseases \u2026 If they change our plan, the nurses will have to pay a lot and will have to suffer [from these] problems,\u201d said Shella Dominguez, a nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Friday afternoon, Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West (at 10th Avenue and West 59th Street) hospital locations \u2013 which share a contract \u2013 went into new negotiations with Mount Sinai management. But after hours at the table, those talks ended with no agreement.<\/p>\n

In a press release<\/a> published on the first day of the strike, Mount Sinai stated that the striking nurses refused \u201cto move on from [their] extreme economic demands, which we cannot agree to.\u201d The hospital confirmed that it had hired 1,400 nurses to work in place of the strikers \u201cfor as long as this strike lasts.\u201d (Those nurses are reported to be receiving $9,000 per week<\/a> to cross the picket line.)<\/p>\n

An Instagram reel posted to the Mount Sinai account at the start of the strike features the company\u2019s CEO, Brendan Carr, saying \u201cWalking 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Divided, with each side in the bargaining accusing the other of spreading misinformation about details of the issues at stake. A lengthy press update<\/a> from Mount Sinai on Friday gave the hospital\u2019s version of \u201cmyths\u201d versus \u201cfacts,\u201d while on the picket line nurses disputed many of its statements \u2013 including Mount Sinai\u2019s assertion that 20 percent of scheduled nurses still came in to work on the first day of the strike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Live music outside Mount Sinai Morningside on Friday was meant to boost spirits and energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is not the first time city nurses have gone on strike, and some of the issues of the past are present again \u2013 like the nurses\u2019 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re getting antibiotics all night. They have to use the bathroom and walk and we need to make sure that we keep them safe, too,\u201d said Hanover. \u201cSo if we have five patients and we\u2019re trying to do everything at once for one patient, there\u2019s a bunch of tasks for one, the next one\u2019s just waiting for the next task and it\u2019s just going from one room to another.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Multiple unions and organizations \u2013 including the Democratic Socialists of America \u2013 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\u2019s demands have an impact on the Upper West Side community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a matter of if, it\u2019s a matter of when each of us ends up in a hospital like Mount Sinai,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we can decide, in this time, what can we expect when that day comes, when it\u2019s 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Strikers marched in rain and snow Sunday at Mount Sinai West. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made a lot of us feel like they don\u2019t value nursing. And like I said, nurses, they were the backbone. We all work as a team,\u201d said Nataki Jarrett-Henry, an emergency department nurse at Mount Sinai West, about the unsuccessful negotiations on Friday.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nurses on strike last Friday outside Mount Sinai Morningside hospital. Photos by Claudia Gohn By Claudia Gohn\u00a0 At…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[30735,45071,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-104674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-mount-sinai-morningside","tag-mount-sinai-west","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}