New York
Act Daily News
—
The 7,000 nurses who went on strike in New York Monday say the 19% pay hike that hospital administration supplied them was by no means the primary problem.
“We are not out here for wages. We are out here because we want the patients’ safety,” mentioned Lorena Vivas, a nurse at Mount Sinai for 19 years and member of the chief committee of the New York State Nurses Association, to a crowd of lots of of strikers and their supporters in entrance of Mount Sinai Hospital.
“When I’m in ICU, I’m supposed to have two patients. I have three to four. I have two or three nurses working 24 hours,” she mentioned. “This has been going on even before the pandemic. We’ve negotiated for over four months. They’ve refused to listen to us.”
Although seven hospitals unfold throughout town, together with two owned by Mount Sinai elsewhere in Manhattan, have been capable of attain tentative labor offers with the union, Mount Sinai and Montefiore Medical Center, which has three hospitals within the Bronx, weren’t capable of attain offers earlier than a Sunday night time deadline. And so 1000’s of nurses went on strike for ever and ever.
Union officers insist they will’t settle for a deal if it received’t repair the staffing problem. They say that the nurses are at a breaking level.
“We are sick and tired of the hospital only doing the bare minimum,” mentioned Danny Fuentes, a union official who spoke to the group Monday. “Time and time again we are forced to take unsafe patient loads. We are humans and we are burnt out. And we are tired. And the hospital doesn’t seem to care. All they see are profits. We don’t want to be out here. We would much rather be with our patients. We need a fair contract to protect our patients.”
Union officers gave the impression to be successful the general public relations battle on this combat, with automobiles and vans honking their horns in assist of the strikers all through the day. And the union officers have been getting overwhelming cheers from crowd as effectively with their place that they have been preventing to place sufferers over earnings.
Mount Sinai referred to as the strike “reckless” and Montefiore referred to as it a “sad day for New York City.” Both hospitals insisted that they might be capable to present the affected person care wanted with short-term “traveling” nurses introduced in to serve sufferers and by shifting some staff from different duties within the hospital.
But ambulances are being despatched to different hospitals within the metropolis and elective surgical procedures are being postponed. Mount Sinai introduced final week it had began to switch newborns in its neonatal intensive care unit to different hospitals resulting from issues in regards to the high quality of their care throughout a strike.
The general impact on the New York hospital system look like minor to date, based on a metropolis official.
It appeared Monday neither facet was more likely to budge off their bargaining place within the close to time period. While the union and Montefiore are due again on the bargaining desk Monday afternoon, no new talks are scheduled as of noon for Mount Sinai.
Both hospitals insist they’re doing what they will to enhance staffing. The union says Mount Sinai and Montefiore have extreme staffing issues and have to do greater than the others to enhance affected person care and work situations.
Both hospitals referred to as on the union to take a suggestion of binding arbitration to settle the dispute proposed late Sunday by New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Although Hochul made a proposal extra to administration’s liking than the union, the union trotted out a bevy of elected and union officers from across the state on Monday’s rally to assist their place.
– Act Daily News’s Vanessa Yurkevich and Tami Luhby contributed to this report