With roughly 9,500 NYC nurses set to strike on Monday if they do not receive a fair contract from the city’s private hospital administrators, BronxCare reached a tentative agreement with the nursing union in the waning hours of midnight on Friday.
BronxCare, as well as The Brooklyn Hospital Center, reached tentative agreements that will improve safe staffing levels and increase nursing wages by 7%, 6% and 5% for each year of the proposed three-year contract, while also saving their health care benefits.
Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Richmond University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian had also reached tentative agreements with the New York State Nursing Association (NYSNA) earlier this week, and await a final vote from nurses on those contracts.
Last night, nurses at Maimonides voted overwhelmingly by 94% to approve their new contract, and BronxCare will need to wait for a similar vote for the new contract to be ratified.
On Dec. 30, eight hospitals were given notice that without new, fair contracts, nurses, long-fed up with their treatment and lack of resources, would walk out. Nurses at BronxCare — formerly Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center — had planned to strike starting Monday if an agreement could not be reached.
So far, three hospitals remain without contracts — Bronx-based Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside and West appear to be in different stages of negotiations with NYSNA.
On Thursday, Montefiore officials said their offer which included an 18% wage increase, fully funded health care for life, and a significant increase in registered nurses in the emergency departments, among other benefits, was rejected by NYSNA.
NYSNA said during press conferences earlier this week that they want Montefiore to continue to come to the table, but noted that they need to act in good faith and meet nurses’ demands for improved staffing levels.
A Montefiore nurse familiar with negotiations told the Bronx Times that a third-party mediator had been brought in to help with negotiations, but a deal still has not be reached as of Saturday morning.
According to NYSNA, the new nursing agreements aim to improve patient care, staffing and wages for thousands of nurses while ensuring that the quality of hospital care is the same for upper-income Manhattan patients as it is for low-income Black and brown patients in the outer boroughs.
Reach Robbie Sequeira at rsequeira@schnepsmedia.com or (718) 260-4599. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
