Striking nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian on Friday announced a tentative agreement with hospital management to return to work next week in exchange for new workplace protections and higher salaries. Nurses will vote on whether to ratify the deal starting Friday, their union said.<\/p>\n
If the more than 4,000 striking NewYork-Presbyterian nurses approve the contract, it will end the historic nurses strike that began on Jan. 12. The New York State Nurses Association has called it the longest and largest nurses strike in city history.<\/p>\n
The union members at NewYork-Presbyterian are the last holdouts in that strike after more than 10,000 nurses at Montefiore and Mount Sinai ratified contracts<\/a> with their employers last week and began returning to work over the weekend.<\/p>\n The tentative agreement with NewYork-Presbyterian, which was announced shortly after midnight, includes a roughly 12% salary increase over three years, the same as that won by nurses at the other hospital systems. It also includes commitments from NewYork-Presbyterian to boost staffing, implement new workplace safety measures and to maintain nurses\u2019 health benefits.<\/p>\n This is the second time in two weeks that NewYork-Presbyterian nurses are voting on a new contract. Their previous contract expired Dec. 31.<\/p>\n NYSNA leadership launched a ratification vote last week, even though the nurse bargaining committee at NewYork-Presbyterian had rejected the deal that was then on the table. The committee said the deal did not include sufficient staffing gains or employment protections.<\/p>\n