Nurses Care for New York
NYSNA represents 20,000 New York City nurses from all five boroughs — from the safety net hospitals to the academic medical centers. We are so powerful when we are united. And make no mistake, we are united to win respect for nurses and patients.
We are united by our commitment to care for New York — in good times and in bad. It’s the nurses who show up and who do the work who make a difference in patients’ lives. We will need all of us to continue showing up and fighting for the fair contract we deserve. We know that we have a fight on our hands. We know because we’ve already started fighting it before even getting to the bargaining table. NYSNA nurses have been fighting against federal healthcare cuts that will devastate access to care for our patients and devastate hospital funding. NYSNA nurses have been fighting against rich and greedy hospital systems like NewYork-Presbyterian that cut frontline staff before the ink was even dry on federal healthcare cuts.
We know that we have a fight on our hands with our contract campaign this time around. But we also know that we can win. We have faced these bosses together before. Three years ago, we launched our historic contract campaign together. It was the first time so many NYSNA members at New York City’s private hospital came together around a shared vision, a common bargaining platform and a common deadline to win contracts.
And we made history. We won the best contracts in our union’s history — the highest wages and the strongest safe staffing language. We saved our NYSNA benefit plan, and we left no one behind. We stayed united from beginning to end, when and where it mattered. We honored the issues that different hospitals faced, and all 12 hospitals won.
It wasn’t easy. Nurses at two hospitals went on strike to win their demands. Mount Sinai and Montefiore nurses put it all on the line. The staffing language they won set the pattern for winning staffing arbitrations not just at those hospitals and not just in New York City private sector hospitals but for NYSNA nurses throughout the state.
We Won’t Go Back
Every facility faces different issues and different bosses. But there’s so much more that unites us than separates us. We all want to maintain high registered nurse standards and enough nurses to provide quality care to our patients. We all want a voice in patient care and in our own health and safety. The path to achieve these things comes from our unity and solidarity.
Three years ago, we bargained for our first contract post-COVID. Our bosses were slow to invest in patient care and hire more nurses. Our nurse numbers were down. Our patient numbers were up — and our patients were coming in sicker than ever before. We were overworked, and our mental health continued to suffer from what many of us experienced during the pandemic. Our bosses wanted to continue a policy of forced austerity. They wanted to cut our healthcare. They wanted to keep our wages stagnant. They didn’t want to hire enough nurses for safe staffing. They wanted to ignore our safe staffing contractual standards.
But, of course, they also wanted to hold onto the record pay hikes and bonuses they gave themselves during the pandemic. The bosses wanted austerity for nurses and patients but not for hospital executives.
Do you think they’ll do anything different this time around? We’re not holding our breath. We’ll be speaking out instead. We can make an educated guess that our employers will push austerity for nurses and patients once again. Instead of fighting with us to secure healthcare funding to protect access to care for all New Yorkers — including our most vulnerable patients — some hospitals will fight against nurses.
We know what we are up against. We know what we have to do. We have to continue fighting for healthcare resources for our communities. The federal government and several of New York’s elected officials let us down. They made our fight much harder. But we need to continue to fight and advocate for state and local elected officials to do everything in their power to restore healthcare funding and protect our most vulnerable patients — our patients who are immigrants, LGBTQ and of low income! We have to hold our bosses’ feet to the fire. We cannot allow some of the richest and most financially stable hospital systems to use federal cuts as an excuse to cut staff and services. We cannot allow hospital executives to eat steak and lobster while our units are being starved of nurses.
Nurses Care for New York. We will not stand by and watch our healthcare system crumble and our patients suffer. We will not stand by and watch as hospitals try to cut staff and cut the essential healthcare services our communities need. We will not stand by and watch as executives try to take away our healthcare or other benefits. We will not stand by and watch as nurses are subjected to violence and our bosses do little about it. We will not stand by and watch as our bosses try to replace us with virtual nurses and artificial intelligence.
United Like Never Before
We will stand up and show that Nurses care for New York — especially in this time of need. Nurses care by advocating for our patients — wherever and however we can. Nurses care by working together to lift up all nurses. An attack on one is an attack on all!
NYSNA nurses will be there to support one another — in rich hospitals and in safety net hospitals and in every borough. We need to be united like never before! We need to remember that we are one union, united to win! We need to act as one. We need to act in solidarity to defend access to care. Our patients and all of New York are counting on us!
And remember, when we fight, we win!