NYC nurses on strike resume negotiations with hospitals on 11th day

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City nurses on strike headed back to the bargaining table Thursday with hospital administrators to try to bring an end to the city’s biggest walkout of its kind in decades.

The New York State Nurses Association said contract negotiations resumed in the morning with officials at the three private hospital systems impacted by the strike: Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian.

The union said nurses are committed to bargaining daily to settle the dispute.

Roughly 15,000 nurses walked off the job on Jan. 12, prompting the hospitals to bring on thousands of temporary workers to keep operations running.

“Nurses stand ready to bargain to reach fair contracts and end the strike,” the union said in a statement ahead of the talks. “Nurses will continue to picket and strike until tentative agreements are reached with the hospitals.”

The union held one bargaining session with each of the three hospital systems last week, but those hourslong meetings ended with little progress and no plans for further talks.

Each affected hospital is negotiating with the union independently as not every hospital run by the three systems is involved. Other private hospital systems reached tentative agreements with the union, averting walkouts, and city-run public hospitals are not part of the talks.

The renewed discussions this week come at the urging of Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both Democrats, according to the union.

Mamdani spoke Tuesday at a union rally in front of Mount Sinai’s hospital on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, alongside U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Nurses say they’re seeking to protect their health care benefits, as well as secure contract provisions addressing staffing levels and safety against workplace violence.

Hospitals say the union is seeking “unrealistic” and unaffordable pay raises. They also maintain they aren’t proposing to cut nurses’ health benefits, as the union contends.