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More than 21,000 nurses in New York City and Long Island must act immediately to prevent the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) from sabotaging their city-wide strike scheduled for January 12. As of this writing, the union has withdrawn strike notices at seven of the 15 hospitals involved without even having secured contracts.

The union bureaucracy is openly defying its members’ near-unanimous strike vote and working feverishly to prevent what would be the largest nurses strike in New York City history. The nurses must organize independent rank-and-file committees, impose their decision to strike from below and take control over bargaining and the conduct of the strike to prevent a sellout. They must also appeal to workers throughout New York for support.

“I am in support of a strike,” a nurse from the medical-surgical unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City told the World Socialist Web Site. “Some people think we would be selfish to walk out, but it is also selfish to keep working under conditions when we can’t properly take care of people.”

“Healthcare workers across the board should be organized because we didn’t get a raise this year,” said a worker at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

A travel nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital said she supports a strike “because it’s going to help everybody in the long run. I’m a nurse, and it’s going to benefit us all. We can hang in there and support each other while we ask for the things we need in healthcare.”

“Teams are only as strong as their weakest links, and if nurses are being made to supervise patients on their break time, for example, when there’s not adequate coverage, that’s something that’s going to affect everyone in the healthcare system,” said a medical student.

Under the auspices of a mediator, NYSNA officials met with representatives of One Brooklyn Health’s Interfaith Medical Center, One Brooklyn Health’s Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, Maimonides Medical Center, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center and Richmond University Medical Center on January 5. On January 7, they withdrew strike notices at Brooklyn Hospital Center and Flushing Hospital Medical Center.

Claiming to have made “major progress,” NYSNA unilaterally withdrew strike notices at these five hospitals, even though no contracts had been finalized. The union also claimed to have reached agreements on artificial intelligence and pensions with the hospitals. It has given no details about any of these agreements, and they have called off strikes at these facilities without full contracts. Nevertheless, NYSNA announced that it aimed to settle contracts with these hospitals by Friday, January 9, and hold ratification votes afterward.

Nancy Hagans, president of NYSNA, told CBS News that she hoped to reach deals with all hospitals before the strike deadline.

This is deliberate sabotage. No contract reached under such circumstances can be anything else but entirely pro-management.

The NYSNA bureaucrats aim to repeat their betrayal of nurses at 12 city hospitals in 2023. Then, as now, safe staffing was foremost among the nurses’ demands, and the nurses voted by nearly 99 percent to strike. But instead of leading a powerful, united struggle, NYSNA kept its members divided by facility. It issued strike notices only to rescind them days later, announcing tentative agreements that it proclaimed to be victories for safe staffing. The union quickly held ratification votes to lock the agreements in place. The character of these agreements, is made plain by the fact that the nurses are raising the same demand for safe staffing three years later.

Workers’ frustration was too great for NYSNA to prevent strikes at Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital. Nevertheless, the union shut down these strikes after only three days.

The new betrayal would be even more outrageous. The federal government is systematically eviscerating public health and workers’ rights. In New York, federal spending cuts will reduce hospital funding by an estimated $8 billion and result in 34,000 hospital job losses during the next few years.

Under the direction of conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sharply reduced the schedule of childhood vaccinations and recommended that the hepatitis B vaccine be delayed instead of administered at birth. The very institutions charged with protecting workers’ health are being dismantled, and the result will be major increases in disease, disability and death.

The NYSNA officials have refused to defend public health or its own members’ jobs and rights. It did nothing to mobilize workers against the closure of Mount Sinai Beth Israel in April 2025. It is doing nothing but holding ineffectual vigils in response to the disciplining of three Mount Sinai Hospital nurses, one of whom was suspended, for raising safety demands after an attempted shooting in the emergency room.

Another sellout will encourage further attacks on healthcare workers everywhere. These attacks will come not only from hospital administrators, but also from the state.

Everything depends on the independent mobilization of the nurses. They must reject the sellout agreements that are being hatched behind closed doors and seize the initiative from the NYSNA bureaucrats. This step requires the formation of rank-and-file committees outside the union’s control and beholden to neither corporate party.

Through these committees, workers must organize a strike for safe staffing and the best possible patient care. Workers also must hold meetings to publicize their demands and denounce the federal attacks on healthcare. They must appeal to workers throughout New York for support.

The New York nurses’ struggle must become the spearhead of a broader working class offensive against the subordination of vital social services to the profit interests defended by the entire political establishment.