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The strike by 15,000 nurses in New York City is at a critical stage. On Tuesday, a day after the New York State Nurses Association announced sellout tentative agreements with Montefiore and Mount Sinai, the union leadership has moved to shut down the strike at the remaining hospital system, NewYork Presbyterian. Union bureaucrats, including NYSNA president Nancy Hogans and Executive Director Pat Kane, intervened directly to reach a tentative agreement through bypassing the local negotiating committee, in blatant violation of the union’s bylaws.
The NYSNA leadership has commandeered the unions communications channels and is urging nurses to approve the shutdown of the strike by immediately ratifying the backroom deal, which fails to fulfill even the most minimal staffing demands.
The moves by the union leadership to sabotage the strike has triggered an eruption of outrage and prompted calls for NYSNA president Nancy Hagans to resign. Nurses are planning a march Tuesday morning to NYSNA headquarters in protest.
The blatantly undemocratic maneuvers of NYSNA leadership acting on behalf of the hospital executives and the Democratic Party underscores the necessity for the rank and file to assert full control over the strike, beginning with a rejection of the deals at all the hospitals.
The New York Healthcare Workers Rank-and-File Committee hosted a well-attended meeting Monday evening, bringing together striking nurses in New York with other hospital workers in New York, strikers in California and other sections of workers. Workers on the call voted overwhelmingly to adopt the following statement:
The Healthcare Workers Rank-and-File Committee denounces the tentative agreements signed by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) with Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Health System and calls on nurses to overwhelmingly reject the illegitimate effort by the NYSNA leadership to ram through these sellout deals.
NYSNA officials are rushing through snap votes Tuesday and Wednesday without giving nurses adequate time to review or discuss the contracts. This crude maneuver is aimed at breaking the unity of nurses, isolating the remaining 4,500 strikers at NewYork-Presbyterian, and forcing their surrender.
By accepting this agreement without the approval of the union’s local executive board at New York-Presbyterian, the top leadership of NYSNA violated the union’s own bylaws. This proves the entire process is illegitimate and no vote should have ever taken place. Rank-and-file nurses should demand an end to this sham vote and reject any results announced by the NYSNA leadership.
Nurses must demand the resignation of all those organizing this travesty of democratic procedures, and for a new bargaining committee to be elected by the rank and file. This committee should outline a list of non-negotiable demands, drawn up at mass meetings of the rank and file, and a new strategy to win the strike. This includes expanding it across New York, including the 11 other hospitals in the city and on Long Island where contracts expired December 31.
These agreements signed by the NYSNA leadership are a slap in the face to the 15,000 nurses who have spent more than a month on the picket lines, in the cold and without strike pay. They fail to address the central issues of unsafe staffing, overcrowding and inadequate pay. At the same time, the TA fails to reinstate fired nurses, thus effectively endorsing victimization, including the firing of labor and delivery nurses at Mount Sinai.
Nurses struck not only to defend themselves and their patients, but future generations of healthcare workers. This battle must not be lost. To win, nurses must take control of the struggle out of the hands of the NYSNA bureaucracy and place it in the hands of workers on the hospital floors.
At the same time, nurses can place no confidence in Democratic politicians. Governor Hochul has backed the hospitals’ strikebreaking efforts, while Mayor Mamdani, despite his rhetoric, has authorized NYPD arrests of protesting nurses.
Healthcare Workers Rank-and-File Committee calls on New York nurses to unite with the 31,000 healthcare workers and 3,000 pharmacy and lab workers on strike at Kaiser Permanente facilities in California and Hawaii. These struggles must become the spearhead of a nationwide movement to defend workers’ rights and end the subordination of healthcare to corporate profit.
We further call on striking nurses to link their fight with the growing opposition to the reign of terror carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), overseen by President Donald Trump and enforced with the collaboration of the Democratic Party.
Nurses should help lead the fight for a general strike to remove federal agents from US cities, end the persecution of immigrants, and demand the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the murder of Renée Good, ICU nurse Alex Pretti and the assault on constitutional rights.