NEW YORK (PIX11) — Wednesday saw the nurses’ strike move solidly into its third week.
While recent negotiations between the nurses’ union and the three hospital systems have brought the two sides closer to an agreement, the two sides remain at odds.
It all leaves the prospect of the labor dispute unresolved, even as talks continue and the weather conditions in which the nurses picket become more severe as this week progresses.
At the Montefiore Moses campus, members of the New York State Nurses Association, or NYSNA, the nurses’ union, walked in two picket lines in front of the hospital from before sunrise on Thursday to just before sunset.
Deborah Drake was one of the dozens of union nurses holding signs, waving noisemakers and chanting in the 20-degree weather, with a wind chill in the low teens.
“We know what we deserve and what our patients deserve,” Drake said. “It keeps us motivated — rain, snow, whatever it is.”
Rosemary Amo-Bonner was another nurse who came out daily since the strike began on Jan. 12.
“We’re out here fighting for the community,” she said. “Nobody should have healthcare the way it’s been delivered by these bosses right in there,” she added, pointing toward the hospital.
In the last few days, the nurses got one of their four key issues addressed in negotiations.
New York-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai agreed to keep nurses’ healthcare benefits intact, with no alterations.
That left at least two other major issues to be resolved in talks between NYSNA and Montefiore, New York-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai.
Mt. Sinai’s main campus and the combination of its two other main hospitals — Mt. Sinai West and Mt. Sinai Morningside — negotiate separately. So the nurses’ union is in talks with four different entities.
The three main remaining issues are staffing levels, nurses’ physical security, and pay.
The need to include in an agreement the issue of staffing levels to prevent, said Montefiore nurse Gary Bendykowski, he’d experienced firsthand.
He said that when patient rooms fill up, he’s frequently had to treat patients in overflow conditions that were far less than ideal.
“We found a spot in the hallway,” he said, “and that’s where the patient stayed for the duration of their treatment.”
“I had to give blood transfusions to a patient in the hallway,” he added.
That kind of overcrowding, said Nelson Bertran, Jr., another Montefiore nurse, leads to unsafe conditions, from which the union is demanding protection.
“If I have a lot of patients,” he said, “it’s hard to get to all of those patients when they need something. So they get frustrated, and they take it out on the first person they see, the person who’s with them the most, and that’s me, the nurse.”
“I’ve been assaulted, yes, on more than one occasion,” Bertran added.
Sources close to the negotiations said that both sides were meeting well into Wednesday evening.
For its part, a Montefiore spokesperson said in a statement:
“We have been back at the table this week and have made meaningful proposals to NYSNA on economics, staffing, safety, and AI. Our proposals are in NYSNA’s corner and we are awaiting a response.”
The spokesperson also said, regarding issues of overcrowding, that both the length of patients’ stays in the Emergency Department and the length of time it takes for a patient to be placed in a hospital bed have declined in the last three years.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital confirmed that its executives were negotiating with NYSNA senior members on Wednesday.
