It’s been over two months since the employment contract has lapsed for New York City’s public nurses without a resolution in sight. Now they say it’s time for the city to pay up in order to turn around the hospital system’s staffing crisis. Hundreds of nurses represented by the New York State Nurses Association, the state’s largest nursing union, rallied on Wednesday with supportive political leaders in Foley Square to demand pay raises that could help public hospitals compete with the private sector in hiring.
At the rally, NYSNA nurses and officials made a fiscal case for a raise. The union reported that there are nearly 2,000 nursing vacancies at NYC Health + Hospitals facilities and that during the process of bargaining they found that just within the first three months of 2022, city hospitals spent $197 million on travel nurses, temporary hires that understaffed facilities bring on at exorbitant pay rates to fill the gaps in coverage.
The union estimates that the city spent over half a billion on travel nurses total last year.
“We’ve done the math. I’m a nurse but we all know as nurses, we know our numbers. And I’m sure I could tell you that the city is spending billions of dollars on travel nurses. If they take half of that money, they’ll have enough for pay equity for you,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said during the rally.
The union, joined by Rev. Al Sharpton, the Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan borough presidents, the city comptroller as well as a handful of members of the City Council, took aim at the mayor over the delay in the negotiation process.
Though the union is bargaining with both city representatives and the H+H system, H+H President Mitchell Katz has publicly supported the union’s push to pay public hospital nurses as much as their private-sector counterparts.
“The goal is to reduce our dependency on temporary staff, because we know that it’s good for our entire health system,” said a H+H spokesperson in response to the rally. On the other hand, the spokesperson added, the city has remained a holdout on the pay parity demands.
The city says that it is working toward putting a contract together.
“We look forward to negotiating a new contract with NYSNA and welcome new opportunities to strengthen our partnership with NYSNA and the nurses who are so essential to our mission and our System’s success,” said a City Hall spokesperson.
Judith Cutchin, NYSNA’s first vice president and a registered nurse in Brooklyn, said that the pay difference between the private and the public sector in the city is a whopping $19,000 per year.
“Nurse retention is the worst I’ve ever seen in my 31 years in Health + Hospitals. We are constantly hiring and training, then constantly watching these same nurses walk out the door for higher pay and better staffing in the private sector,” Cutchin said.
The union marshaled an impressive show of political force at the rally — even among the mayor’s allies like Sharpton.
“This is a human rights issue. It’s a health issue. It’s a civil rights issue. Pay what you owe,” Sharpton said during the rally.
Sharpton was not the only political ally to deliver a fiery appeal for the nurses’ pay raise at the event.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards referenced the pay raise that the mayor agreed to pay police officers in their recent contract, which would reportedly cost the city a total of $5.5 billion through 2027.
“It’s not good enough to give the NYPD billions of dollars more while leaving out the nurses who were on the front lines with the NYPD and their loved ones and our community. You deserve your damn wages,” said Richards.
Though the union’s public nurses are barred under state law from striking like their private sector counterparts did, NYSNA said that it has given the city a deadline of June 1 to reach an agreement before it further ramps up its advocacy efforts.
