{"id":131441,"date":"2026-02-12T17:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T17:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/131441\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T17:21:12","slug":"nurses-at-newyork-presbyterian-reject-contract-extend-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/131441\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian reject contract, extend strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by THE CITY<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> to get the latest New York City news<\/a> delivered to you each morning. Public health, explained: Sign up to receive Healthbeat\u2019s free New York City newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NewYork-Presbyterian nurses rejected a tentative agreement by an overwhelming margin Wednesday, voting to extend their strike \u2014 now 32 days running \u2014 against the hospital system. <\/p>\n

Their union, the New York State Nurses Association, said the unfair labor practice strike and bargaining will continue. Out of about 4,200 NewYork-Presbyterian nurses who were eligible to cast ballots, 3,099 voted to reject the deal, and 867 voted to approve it.<\/p>\n

At Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, and Montefiore, nurses voted to approve their contracts Wednesday evening by margin of 87%, 96%, and 85% respectively and will return to work this weekend.<\/p>\n

A NewYork-Presbyterian spokesperson said the hospital was \u201cdisappointed that our nurses did not ratify the mediator\u2019s proposal, which we accepted on Feb. 8 and NYSNA leadership endorsed.\u201d The spokesperson, Angela Karafazli, said the hospital is willing to honor the rejected proposal for reconsideration.<\/p>\n

Nancy Hagans, the president of NYSNA, called on the hospital to \u201cagree to a fair contract and bring all of our nurses back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nurses at the three hospital systems have been on strike since Jan. 12 trying to secure stronger nurse-to-patient ratios, claiming that staffing shortages put their and their patients\u2019 well-being at risk.<\/p>\n

Nurses demand investigation<\/p>\n

The dramatic development unfolded hours after more than 50 nurses delivered a petition to the NYSNA headquarters demanding a formal disciplinary investigation into top union leadership over members\u2019 claims that leaders are forcing a vote on a tentative agreement with NewYork-Presbyterian that rank-and-file representatives rejected at the bargaining table.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear what mechanism the union has to investigate the actions of its two top executives, said Hagans and Pat Kane, NYSNA executive director. Nurses also demanded that the findings of the probe be subject to a full hearing open to all of its members. <\/p>\n

More than 1,500 nurses signed the petition in the hours after NYSNA and NewYork-Presbyterian announced the agreement<\/a> that nurses ultimately voted to reject on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

NYSNA\u2019s decision to forge ahead with a vote at NewYork-Presbyterian had infuriated members who said they stood by their executive committee\u2019s assertion that the deal did not meet their needs. NYSNA has executive committees at each of its hospitals; those committees are made up of union members who participate in contract negotiations. <\/p>\n

Beth Loudin, a neonatal nurse and member of the executive committee at NewYork-Presbyterian, said top union leadership informed her it was moving ahead with a vote Tuesday afternoon \u2014 days after she and the committee originally rejected it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t even call it a memorandum of agreement, because there\u2019s no signature on it,\u201d Loudin said. \u201cThis is a rush job to get a vote out, because it\u2019s in alignment with the other hospitals. It was very jarring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three-year agreement was pending ratification by the union\u2019s rank-and-file members, who had until 5 p.m. Wednesday to approve or reject the deal. The tentative agreement included the same 12% salary increases that the union secured in earlier deals with Mount Sinai and Montefiore<\/a>, but it did not guarantee nurse-to-patient ratio enforcement language available to nurses at those hospitals.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Kane, the union\u2019s executive director, addressed the controversy at NewYork-Presbyterian in a video to members that was included in an email with the ballot, first obtained by Gothamist<\/a>: \u201cThe simple fact is that we\u2019ve reached the end of negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are overriding our voices,\u201d said NewYork-Presbyterian nurse educator Cagatay Chelik. <\/p>\n

Nurses marched from Macy\u2019s on 34th Street to the union\u2019s headquarters a block south on West 33rd to deliver the petition on Wednesday, chanting, \u201cWe are your nurses! Listen to your nurses!\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked for comment on the union members\u2019 petition and protest, a NYSNA spokesperson referred THE CITY to an earlier statement by Hagans, the union\u2019s president, where she urged her members not to rush to judgment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe all striking nurses deserve to see the details of their tentative agreements and get the opportunity to vote on whether to ratify a new contract,\u201d Hagans said. \u201cAs a democratic, member-led union that responds to its members, we are moving forward with a vote on tentative contracts at all four hospitals with the goal of returning all nurses to work as soon as possible.\u201d <\/p>\n

Loudin and about a half-dozen other union colleagues became visibly emotional as they delivered the signed petition to NYSNA\u2019s general counsel and contract specialists who were summoned to the lobby to meet with the protesting nurses. Hagans and Kane did not meet with the nurses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been truly painful personally that my union decided to go against my leadership and my nurses,\u201d Loudin told the union\u2019s contract specialists. \u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting for this for six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Sold us out to management\u2019<\/p>\n

The strike is the longest and its kind in New York City history; at its peak, with 15,000 members across all four hospital systems on the picket line, it was also the largest. Nurses struggled to make ends meet over many weeks on the picket line without health care or their paychecks<\/a>. The hospitals cancelled elective procedures, rerouted patients to hospitals unaffected by the work stoppage, and collectively paid about $100 million for travel nurses to staff their facilities during the strike. <\/p>\n

Mount Sinai CEO Dr. Brendan Carr on Wednesday cheered the nurses\u2019 return to work, and acknowledged the rancor of the past month in a statement to staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past several weeks have been challenging, emotional, frustrating, and exhausting in different ways for all of us,\u201d Carr wrote. \u201cAs I have said many times over the past several weeks, thank you again to everyone who played a role either big or small to help us navigate these challenges. We never lost sight of the fact that our patients always come first.\u201d<\/p>\n

NewYork-Presbyterian nurses who spoke with THE CITY earlier on Wednesday said they felt betrayed by their top leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately now we\u2019re at a point in which our union\u2019s senior leadership, specifically our executive director and the president, have sold us out to management,\u201d said Esteban Barrena, a nurse at NYP-Morgan Stanley Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

The union had touted the tentative agreement at NewYork-Presbyterian as a victory for nurses, securing commitments to preserve the union\u2019s health care and benefits and to hire more staff in order to improve nurse-to-patient ratios.<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s executive committee had rejected the deal because the staffing proposals that the mediator had recommended would not guarantee job security for existing nurses, Loudin said. It also does not include the same staffing ratio enforcement language that nurses at Mount Sinai and Montefiore have had in their contracts since 2023<\/a>, which the union has touted as some of the most secure in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the reason we\u2019ve been fighting for all of this,\u201d Barrena added. \u201cWhy would union leadership compromise on that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Claudia Irizarry Aponte is a senior reporter covering labor and work for THE CITY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by THE CITY. Sign up to get the latest New York City news…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[44321,9,24,55,54,22943,38978,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-131441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-healthbeat","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-newyork-presbyterian-hospital","14":"tag-nurses-strike","15":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131441","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=131441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}