Voices from the Picket Line: Interviews with NYC Nurses on Strike

Fifteen thousand New York City nurses are on strike across different hospitals amid their current contract fight. It’s the biggest strike of its kind in the city’s history. The nurses, organized by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), are fighting for safe staffing numbers, enforceable nurse-patient ratios, guaranteed healthcare coverage, pensions, and protections from workplace violence.

Left Voice has been covering the strike since it began two weeks ago. Below are interviews with striking nurses.

Strike Day 3

I arrived at the picket line for Mount Sinai West, one of the hospitals on strike, a little before 5:00 p.m. to find workers walking to loud, dancey music. It was the end of the third day of the strike, and even though there were only 30 to 40 people, the energy was high.

I started chatting with a nurse, who I’ll refer to as J, after I overheard him speaking with his coworkers about why striking is important and how it’s crazy that the CEO has multiple houses and is threatening to take away their insurance. J’s been working at the hospital for about three years. I asked if he’d tell me about the demands the nurses have.

He started by explaining that their main demand is for lower nurse-patient ratios. The nurses have too many patients to attend to. Pointing to an ICU nurse standing nearby, he said, “If she has four patients in the ICU, she can’t possibly attend to all of them properly.” A patient might need eight different bags of IV, which takes a long time to set up, meaning the nurse doesn’t have enough time to help other patients. With ratios like this, nurses burn out, and their patients don’t get the care they need.

A second demand, he explained, is for better health insurance and benefits. Mount Sinai is threatening to remove nurses’ coverage, forcing them to pay for it out of pocket. On top of that, management isn’t offering a pay raise to compensate for the loss of coverage, so workers would effectively be taking a pay cut. The ICU nurse standing nearby added that, because of a current dispute between Mount Sinai and their insurance company, the nurses can’t even get care at the hospital where they work.

The final demand, J told me, is that the hospital address workplace violence. Nurses are punched and assaulted, and there aren’t mechanisms in place to do anything about it, which is particularly bad given that they can’t seek care in the hospital where they’re working! The union is asking for more hospital security. The ICU nurse told us that she herself has been a victim of workplace violence, and the hospital has never responded to these incidents.

J added that while the union is also seeking pay raises, it’s not the most important demand. The nurses have different priorities for their raises, but he thinks people would settle for a pretty low raise. He noted that another disagreement between union members is about how to negotiate the length of their shifts. Some people want to be able to work 13-hour shifts without breaks, while others think that’s too long to go without a break.

As we spoke, J reiterated the importance of solidarity, not only among the nursing staff, but also among doctors, physician assistants, and other staff. “It’s a team effort,” he said, after his colleague noted that it’s the nurses who make Mount Sinai such a good hospital. “It’s not just the nurses,” he said. “It’s everyone that works here.” But nurses in particular have very high rates of burnout and often don’t last more than five years in the field in New York, he told me. Burnout is even worse in the public hospitals, which have less money than private ones like Mount Sinai, and where there are more uninsured patients coming in. He said the public hospitals are pledging to match the salaries of the private hospitals in an attempt to retain talent, but most of the talent is in the private hospitals. He has himself worked in both the public and private hospitals, and the private ones have noticeably more resources.

Throughout our conversation, J downplayed his understanding of everything going on with the strike, despite clearly being very articulate and knowledgeable. “I just have a small perspective on everything. It’s the union leadership that has the big picture and knows about everything going on within the hospital and union.”

When I asked him how long he thought they’d stay on strike, J said he was willing to stay out as long as it takes to get their demands met. “Management isn’t even willing to come to the bargaining table to negotiate,” he said. “They literally closed the door in people’s faces.” But other people have mortgages and kids, and he understands that they might want to end the strike sooner than he would. Still, he hopes the union won’t cave too early.

Strike Day 9

I spoke with two nurses, S and A, who are on strike with NYSNA and work in outpatient neurology at Mount Sinai’s main campus. Both emphasized that the strike is about protecting their health care, their patients, and their families. As one nurse explained, hospital administrators are trying to gut their healthcare benefits. “My insurance is my family’s insurance,” she said. “I have a partner and children — this affects all of us.”

Safe staffing is another central issue. One of the nurses, who previously worked five years on the hospital floor, described firsthand experience with unsafe conditions and the toll they take on both nurses and patients. The nurses are demanding enforceable staffing standards, including arbitration and financial penalties when units are understaffed. They said these measures have helped in the past, noting that Mount Sinai was once short more than 1,100 nurses, a number that has since dropped to around 400 after financial penalties were won after NYNSA’s strike three years ago. According to them, tracking staffing levels through detailed data and spreadsheets has clearly shown where improvements were made and how nurses and patients benefited.

The nurses also pointed to research showing that better nurse-to-patient ratios lead to better patient outcomes. Studies indicate that for every additional patient assigned to a nurse, the risk of a negative outcome increases by up to 7 percent. Despite this evidence, they say hospital leadership has largely refused to engage meaningfully. Management has only come to the table once since the strike began, through a mediator, with no direct sit-down negotiations since — an approach the nurses describe as union busting.

As the strike continues, both nurses said morale remains strong, even as frustration grows. “This has to end somehow,” one said. “But the longer it goes on, the more motivated — and more entrenched — people become.”