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More than 7,000 nurses at two major Big Apple hospitals went on strike early Monday, after negotiations over contracts and staffing broke down overnight.
Nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital’s main campus on Madison Avenue and three locations of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx staged walk-outs starting in the early morning hours, the New York State Nurses Association said.
“After bargaining late into the night at Montefiore and Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday, no tentative agreements were reached,” the union said in a statement. “Today, more than 7,000 nurses at two hospitals are on strike for fair contracts that improve patient care.”
The affected locations in the Bronx are Montefiore Moses on East 210th Street, Montefiore Weiler on Eastchester Road and Montefiore Hutch on Waters Place.
Mount Sinai Health System criticized the nurses’ decision to strike, in a statement posted to Twitter early Monday.
“NYSNA leadership walked out of negotiations shortly after 1 a.m. ET, refusing to accept the exact same 19.1% increased wage offer agreed to by eight other hospitals, including two other Mount Sinai Health System campuses, and disregarding the governor’s solution to avoid a strike,” the statement said.
The walkout comes just a day after a high-ranking Mt. Sinai obstetrics physician emphasized that his staff could be in dire straits if a walkout were to happen.
“This is not a good thing for us, for the patients … We are really, really in a bad situation,” the chief doctor told his staff at the end of a call Sunday, preparing them for the possibility they will have to deliver their patients’ babies at Lenox Hill Hospital or NYU Langone, according to audio obtained by The Post.
