FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023
Contact: Kristi Barnes | press@nysna.org | 646-853-4489
Eliza M. Bates | eliza.bates@nysna.org | 646-285-8491
Tentative Contract Agreements Reached Late Last Night at Maimonides Medical Center and Richmond University Medical Center
NYSNA Responds to Montefiore Statement: " If Montefiore can afford to pay its executives so much, they can hardly cry broke when it comes to negotiating a fair contract with frontline nurses"
New York, NY—NYSNA will hold a press briefing today, Jan. 5 from 11:30 a.m.—12:00 p.m. with NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN.
This short briefing will provide an update about what is happening with contract negotiations at hospitals that will strike beginning Jan. 9 unless tentative contract agreements can be reached. There will be opportunities to ask questions.
The briefing will be recorded and distributed to members of the press who register at the link below. You must register to attend.
NYSNA and Maimonides Medical Center released a joint statement today heralding the tentative agreement, which will benefit more than 1,300 nurses. The agreement improves staffing ratios in several units while ensuring a near-universal ratio-based staffing plan hospital-wide, adds additional nursing positions, improves the staffing enforcement and dispute resolution process, increases nurse wages by 19.10% compounded over 3 years, and preserves the NYSNA health benefits with no increased cost to employees.
Voting to ratify the contract begins tomorrow at Maimonides. The NYSNA bargaining committee at Maimonides is recommending members vote yes to ratify the contract.
More details about the tentative agreement reached at Richmond University Medical Center will be available at the 11:30 a.m. briefing.
NYSNA also responded to a statement that Montefiore Medical Center executives released late last night.
NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN, said: "At the height of the pandemic, Montefiore spent $27,975,832 in salaries, bonuses, and perks for their top earners, and Montefiore has some of the highest paid hospital executives in all New York City. In 2020, two out of the top five highest paid hospital executives in the state were from Montefiore. Montefiore's CEO alone raked in $7,422,610 in salary, bonus and perks in 2020, at the same time that frontline nurses worked around the clock, facing unimaginable death and trauma. If Montefiore can afford to pay its executives so much, they can hardly cry broke when it comes to negotiating a fair contract with frontline nurses."
"Nurses are the backbone of Montefiore and are fighting to protect Bronx patients, while Montefiore has cut vital primary care services and is now putting the Nurse-Family Partnership, a lifeline that provides home healthcare to high-risk pregnant mothers and their newborns in the Bronx, on the chopping block. The loss of this preventative health program means that women of color in the Bronx will continue to die at alarming rates from health conditions that could have been avoided if caught early. Meanwhile, even before COVID, Montefiore was putting too many patients in beds in hospital hallways instead of hospital rooms, and now they are doing it again.
"As nurses, our top concern is patient safety. Yet nurses at Montefiore have been forced to work without enough staff, stretched to our breaking point, sometimes with one nurse in the Emergency Department responsible for 20 patients. That's not safe for nurses or our patients. Montefiore needs to come to the table with concrete proposals to address the understaffing crisis, including safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. Nurses will continue to bargain in good faith, and we hope Montefiore will do the same."
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The New York State Nurses Association represents more than 42,000 members in New York State. We are New York’s largest union and professional association for registered nurses. NYSNA is an affiliate of National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, the country's largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses, with more than 225,000 members nationwide.
For more information, visit nysna.org.
