NYC NOW - Unpacking the Largest Nurses Strike in NYC History... For Now

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jean-A Pierre. New York City nurses returned to work a couple weeks ago after the union's longest strike ever. On today's episode, we dive into what caused thousands of nurses to walk off the job in the first place and what negotiations were made to get them back into hospitals. But first, here's what's happening in New York City. Mayor Zoram Mamdani is planning to roll out the city's free child care for two-year-olds in parts of Upper Manhattan, the Northwest Bronx, southeastern Queens,

and central and eastern Brooklyn. Mumdani says the program will begin in September for 2,000 toddlers regardless of their family's income or immigration status. We are launching free child care for two-year-olds in Washington Heights,

Inwood, and Hamilton Heights. We are launching free child care for two-year-olds in Fordham, Belmont, Bancourtland Village, Morris Heights, Norwood, and Kingsbridge. The communities were selected based on economic need, projected demand for child care, and provider capacity. Neighborhoods also include Brownsville, Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, and the Rockaways.

Congestion pricing is here to stay after a judge's ruling this week marking a win for the MTA. About a year ago, President Trump declared that congestion pricing was dead. That call proved to be premature. The MTA quickly sued the feds over their move. Now, a U.S. District Court judge says, the Federal Transportation Department acted unlawfully in trying to revoke approval for the tolls. The judge also says the feds can't cut funding for New York State in retaliation for the tolls. The MTA launched congestion pricing last year under the Biden administration.

The program charges drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street a base fee of $9. In its first year, it raised over half a billion dollars, which is being used to fund mass transit upgrades. Congestion pricing opponents, like Staten Island Republican representative Nicole Malia Takas, say they're reviewing the decision and weighing their options. Some news for skaters and sidewalk surfers. A proposal for a new skate park in Brooklyn is hitting a few bumps with nearby residents. The planned skate garden at Mount Prospect Park would pave over some green space to make room for skaters. Council member Crystal Hudson says the tradeoff is worth it to create a new active space for the community.

And what I'm hoping to see is an amazing new space in a wonderfully located park that will provide many more opportunities for many more people to enjoy. Construction on the $11 million park is expected to begin next year. Still ahead, the longest nurses strike in New York City history ended a couple weeks ago. What was the fallout about? That's after a quick break. Welcome back. On January 12th, nearly 15,000 nurses at three of New York City's biggest hospital systems walked off the job.

For some of them, it was the second time in three years. The strike is over now, but it lasted 41 days, yes, 41 days, making it the largest and longest nurses strike in New York City history. It raised some pretty big questions, like, why are nurses walking out again? What happens to their patients when they do? And what did this strike actually accomplish? WNYC Health Reporter Caroline Lewis has been covering this from the picket line to the negotiating table. And she joins us now.

Hey, Caroline. Hey, today. Before we jump into this, thanks so much for covering this very long and I'm sure exhausting strike. I understand that you were visiting nurses out on the picket lines, you know, throughout this strike. often in freezing temperatures as we continue our way through this very long winter. What was it like out there? Yeah, so it was a long strike for the nurses. You know, my time on the picket lines doesn't really compare.

But yeah, like you said, it was often freezing outside. I remember when the strike started on January 12th, I had been up the night before, sort of waiting to see if nurses were going to walk out. They ultimately did walk out at Mount Sinai, New York Presbyterian in Manhattan, and at Montefiore in the Bronx. And you knew that this was going to happen. Yeah. So they have to give notice.

They have to give, you know, they first have to vote to authorize a strike. Then they give 10-day notice. And so during that time, they had been threatening to strike at a lot of hospitals. And ultimately, like, most of them reached deals to avoid a strike. And so then finally, there were these three big hospital systems where they were still threatening to walk out. And so that night before, I was sort of like up waiting to see if, you know, whether it was really going to happen.

And then I was out there at Mount Sinai Hospital. you know, where nurses were lining up before dawn. And you could see it was, you know, it's a tough time when nurses strike, but it was also a special moment for them. They were lining up and waiting for their colleagues who were on the night shift and sort of cheering for them and hugging them when they came out, just hyping each other up. And it's sort of this moment of solidarity.

And of course, people were frustrated with their employers, but I think you do often see this sort of mix of emotions on the picket line. I work at Millsstein Hospital. And how long have you worked here? For about two years. Later that morning, I met Celine Lodge, a nurse at New York Presbyterian. How do you feel about being out on strike today? I feel amazing. It's really sad that it has to come to this.

However, I'm really excited to stand up for our rights and stand up for fair wages, as well as safe staffing. It's really scary out there. Energy's up for Celine there. She seemed very happy to be, you know, out on the picket lines. But that was at the beginning of the nurse's strike. Did that energy hold up throughout the strike? Yeah, I think it was tough. You know, nurses were not getting paid.

Their health insurance was cut off. But when I visited nurses on day nine, which was, you know, especially cold, they already had this chant going one day longer, one day stronger. This is one nurse I spoke to that day, Eleanor McIntyre, who was a cardiac ICU nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside. And so have you been out here? Every day, every other day. How have you been holding it down during the strike? Pretty much every day. I got to take care of myself. I don't have health insurance.

What's that been like? It's been freezing out here. It's been cold, but we got to fight for it. And this was on day nine, Caroline. Did nurses know that it would be so long? Honestly, like some of the hospital leaders, even, you know, right when the strike was starting, were signaling that they were prepared for a long strike. And they had spent a lot of money hiring travel nurses to fill in during the strike. So it seemed like they were really prepared for this. And you see, you know, there on day nine, that was actually the day Mom Donnie came out with Bernie Sanders to sort of lend their support. Good morning, New York City. Hype them up.

Hype them up a little bit. So obviously, like, spirits might have been high because of that. But, you know, I did go out on different days. One day I was out later on in the strike at Montefiore up in the Bronx. and there was actually a nurse DJing the strike. And honestly, that was one of the song. I was listening to this dancehall song and I'm like, wait, they're shouting out Montefiore.

It was a custom song one of his colleagues had made for the strike. Oh, wow. For the strike. Every patient, patient, Montefiore. Every patient. Every patient. So like I said, it was tough, but nurses, you know, were sort of sending the message that they were willing to stick it out. Yeah.

As I mentioned at the top of all of this, this strike lasted 41 days. That's longer than Ramadan. You know, for Catholics, that's longer than the Linton season. Why did this strike drag on so long? Like, what was driving the conflict between nurses and hospitals? Yeah, it was a long journey. And I think there were different factors. driving the strike and making it drag on as long as it did. And each side had a very different

narrative about what was going on. So nurses said, you know, they were trying to preserve and sort of build on the gains they had gotten in the past. You know, staffing is always one of the top concerns for nurses because if they're understaffed on a shift, then they're scared that they're not going to, you know, be giving their patients the right care. They're going to be burnt out. And they also said they were trying to address this wide range of other issues that people working in hospitals in 2026 have to deal with the threat of being assaulted by patients or visitors, new uses of artificial intelligence, which is becoming really prevalent in hospitals, the threat of ice coming into hospitals. And of course, nurses were also asking for significant raises, but I think that

was downplayed a little bit by their union. Why so? Like, how is that downplayed the need for more money? I mean, yeah, they said, you know, that they were fighting for fair wages, but it was like when you asked what, you know, what nurses are fighting for, that it was not. the top line thing that they were saying most of the time. And to be fair, like when I talked to nurses, I think they were saying, you know, we want to be paid fairly, but sometimes they would say there's something more important to them, like making sure there was safe staffing. But they still, you know, in the beginning did have sort of big salary asks. And then, you know, if you asked hospitals, it was all about the money. You know, they said these nurses are already

making more than $150,000 a year on average. Of course, not every nurse is making that. And now they're asking for these big raises and other benefits and staffing gains that will add to our costs. They were saying their asks were going to cost them billions of dollars of year at a time when they were facing these sort of federal health care cuts that are coming under President Trump. And so they were just saying the nurses are being unreasonable. And I think it was clear that hospitals were really much less willing to give concessions this time around than when nurses were on strike at Mount Sinai and Montefiore three years ago. Yeah. Let's talk about that time.

It seems like it was so long ago, but very recent. And it's so wild to me that nurses have been back on the picket line, you know, three years ago. What's the difference this time around? I think that last time nurses sort of established that they were a force to be reckoned with. I think the fact that they went on strike and were sort of successful three years ago probably, you know, fueled their ability to sort of do this this time around and fight for what they wanted. But that was on the heels of, you know, the COVID pandemic, right? Yeah, exactly. It was a very different time. And COVID was still fresh on everyone's minds. Nurses had been called, you know, essential workers. Everyone had come out at 7 p.m. every night and clap for them. But they felt that they didn't really have the pay and working conditions to sort of match the rhetoric. And so nurses really had this clear message. Like you have to invest in bringing back, you know, full-time unionized nurses. We have to be able to enforce these staffing ratios. We need better pay. And, you know, after just three days, you know, of being on strike, they really did get these big wins on pay and staffing. Wow. So that one was way

shorter than this one that just happened. Yeah. Yeah, it was way shorter and it was, I think it was clearer that it was like, okay, nurses struck and then they won, you know? But hospitals were also in a very different place. You know, for one thing, they were far less prepared than they were this time around to sort of endure a long strike. And I think that one made them want to prepare more in case there was another strike. And hospitals were also, you know, getting COVID relief checks at the time. They we're not facing down these big federal cuts. But these are also massive hospital systems that are much more financially resilient than, say, like, a small independent hospital, right?

I think as an example of that, you can even look at how they prepared for the nurses' strike. You know, the Greater New York Hospital Association said they had spent $100 million on replacement staff, and that was at the beginning of the strike. They renewed these contracts throughout the strike to keep their operations going. And so, you know, it's just clear that they have a different level of resources than some of these smaller, more vulnerable hospitals. And certainly, you know, the nurses refrain throughout the strike was some of these CEOs are making so much money. The CEO at New York Presbyterian, $26 million a year.

Wow. And so they were saying it's hard to take them seriously when they call our salary demands unreasonable. Yeah. I mean, my jaw's on the floor right now. I mean, that one's extreme, but it's, I mean, that's real, yeah. Yeah. You know, you talk about temporary replacement nurses. I always wondered, like, the role of travel nurses. So when you say temporary replacement nurses, that's who you're referring to? Yeah, it's a really interesting thing that came up. You can be a travel nurse and it doesn't have to be a strike. You know, you can be someone who goes and fills in when a hospital's under staff. But when you're working a strike, you're getting these huge salaries, right? You could see online during this strike, there were staffing firms, you know, doing callouts for nurses and saying you can make upwards of 8,000, 9.000.

$9,000 a week to work the strike. And there was a big debate going on of like some nurses were calling them scabs for doing this. And they were saying, well, actually like if we weren't here, you wouldn't be able to go on strike because it would be too dangerous. And they were saying, no, you're, you know, letting hospitals act like nothing is happening and everything's fine. It was definitely controversial to be working these strikes. Yeah. And with that in mind, I'd love to talk about patient care here because I want to know the experience for New Yorkers who are in hospitals, who are in need. You know, what happens to them during a strike? One thing that's interesting about a nurse's strike is the nurses who are walking out will acknowledge that there is an inherent risk involved. You know, they say they're playing the long game. They want to help patients in the long term. But it's true, you know, there was a large study of New York nurses' strikes over the years that showed that they increased the risk of patient mortality, even if hospitals brought in replacement staff. This is Molly McCann, a nurse I spoke to on the first day of the strike outside New York Presbyterian sort of acknowledging this. It's really sad.

I walked out with the nurses this morning at 7 a.m. And it was just really sad to leave the patients behind knowing that the care that they're going to be getting while we're out here is questionable. Definitely valid. But hospital leaders throughout the strike were adamant that they were able to keep operating safely during this strike. It's true that they, you know, did seem to be able to minimize the disruptions in care. There were not, like, big ambulance diversions and things like that. And they had, like I said, spent all this money sort of preparing and wanting to not be caught off guard. I'm just curious, like, from the patient's perspective, were things just running as normal?

For some people it was, and they were able to get the care they needed. Other people had appointments canceled or they had surgeries postponed. I spoke to one woman who had had a baby and she wasn't able to get her postpartum appointment at New York Presbyterian. And she's saying, I hope I'm okay. You know, I hope everything's fine. You think the most extreme case I heard, I spoke to the. This patient at Mount Sinai, Jamie Sena, who said she had a major gastrointestinal surgery canceled. I have so much anxiety about this.

She had been through this long saga with her health and was hoping this would provide some relief for chronic abdominal pain she'd been experiencing. And she had taken a long medical leave from work for this surgery. She had a friend fly out to care for her and then it sort of wasn't happening because of the strike. I'm at this point now where after this long journey that I've been on for over a year trying to get help here, I'm like, oh, I need to start talking to other GIs outside of Mount Sinai Network because if this goes on for a long time, I'm going to be screwed because I'm in, I'm in, you know, pretty severe pain. Wow.

I don't know how common a situation like that was, but I think from her perspective, it was like, oh, hospitals are saying that everything. is, you know, sort of chugging along and everything is going, you know, along as normal. And from her perspective, it was like, this is not. Yeah. Yeah. So now we know the strike is over, you know, and hospitals and nurses, they eventually came to an agreement. How did the strike come to an end? What happened? It was a bit of a bumpy road. And yeah, there was some drama. So basically, like, you know, negotiations had been really just like halting throughout the strike between hospitals and nurses. And so they did have mediators.

there to sort of, you know, help move things along and eventually we're sort of negotiating regularly under pressure from the mayor and the governor. And so after about a month, the mediators were like, okay, here's the final agreements. You know, there were some things that overlapped with all the hospitals, like a 12% raise over three years, which, you know, those raises each year were a little delayed. And so ultimately nurses were saying this is sort of just keeping up with inflation. It's not much more than that. But at Mount Sinai and Montefiore, the majority of nurses voted to approve these contracts. But New York Presbyterian's bargaining committee said, no, like, we're not, we're not ready to commit to this. We don't, you know, we still have a couple outstanding

things. Yeah, that's right. The other two hospital systems, their strike had ended, but New York Presbyterian, they were still at the negotiating table. They were like, well, we've been on strike for a month and we'll say when it's the final deal, you know? And so then the president of Nizan and other New York State Nurses Association officials, they actually sent out an email to New or Presbytery Nurses anyway, saying, hey, we have a final deal. It's ready for you to vote on and really like endorsed them voting on it, even though the bargaining committee rejected the deal. Hello, Presby members.

My name is Nancy Higgins, president of Nisna. And I'm Pat Kaine, Executive Director of Nisna. This has been an incredible campaign in strike. Ah, this is more drama. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I was not supposed to see this video. This is like an internal video that was sent out to the nurses, like with the email ballot. So what's in this email?

You have a link to a personal ballot to vote on the deal. And we hope you vote yes. You can hear the president of Nizna Nancy Hagan's sort of encouraging people to just to, you know, sign off on it. To be clear, we have a complete deal if you vote yes. You will have a new Nizna, NYP. contract. Then you had online the nurses at New York Presbyterian saying like don't vote yes, vote no. And overwhelmingly nurses sided with their bargaining committee and, you know, voted against the contract. And nurses at New York Presbyterian and the other hospitals all actually marched on

the New York State Nurses Association headquarters protesting their own union officials. So at that point, things were sort of folding in on themselves. Yeah. And that's certainly unusual, right? Yeah. It was a tough moment. But, nurses did go back to the bargaining table, and, you know, they eventually did get sort of these extra job protections. They didn't get the sort of additional full-time nurses they had been fighting for, but they got like a little bit more of what they were looking for. And so, you know, they said, okay, now we can vote to ratify it. And they did. And that strike ended as well. I'm curious to know about that patient you brought up earlier, Jamie Sinha. Does she decide to go

ahead with her surgery or not? So actually, she did get a call from Mount Sinai after our story came out offering to reschedule her surgery during the strike, but she was hesitant about it. I don't know. It was just this sense of like I would be like another drop in the bucket towards things going back to normal for the hospital without taking care of the nurses. And this is a somewhat extreme case, but she said she ultimately decided not to have the surgery during the strike because she wanted to sort of support the nurses and what they were fighting for. And I heard that from some other patients as well, that even though they wanted the strike to end, they ultimately supported the nurses. And Jamie ended up getting cared at NYU Langone instead. Yeah. And Jamie didn't want a travel nurse.

Yeah. Yeah. She was, I mean, she said, she actually told me, I asked her, is it because you were nervous about the travel nurse? She said, no. I just didn't want to undermine the nurse's cause, which I thought was interesting. And certainly, that's not something nurses ask people to do. They say you're not crossing the picket line if you go get care. But like some people I spoke to, you really felt that way. You know, a lot of what both sides. were citing in this are so very real from federal funding cuts that will affect Medicaid, you know, to AI in health care. It feels like so much is changing around the country right now, and a lot of it is playing out in health care. This agreement that was reached works for now, right?

But could we be right back here in three years again? You know, I think you make a good point there. Nurses and hospitals will always say, you know, strikes are a last resort. But I don't think it's out of the question that we could be back here in three years or that things could at least continue to be very tense. And I think the strike ratcheted up tensions. You know, the union was filing a lot of like unfair labor practice complaints in the weeks leading up to the strike and during the strike. And I spoke with a labor historian at CUNY, Joshua Freeman, who kind of laid out the forces we're dealing with here. These non-fought hospitals are gigantic. And in many ways, act much more like private sector corporations than traditional charity-type organizations. And they have become very cost-conscious. And even over the last three years, much tougher in trying to hold down labor costs and fight organized labor. And on the other hand, the nurses and other health professionals have become one of the most militant groups among American workers. And, you know, health care strikes have actually been on the rise across the country. So, you know, this is not just happening here. And our strike actually overlapped with a massive 30,000 person strike at Kaiser Permanente

in California. You know, if you went on the sort of travel nurse message boards or the strike nurse message boards, people were comparing notes, you know, whether they should sign up in California or New York, which strike should I work? And certainly there are these other forces in healthcare and experts say the trends driving these labor disputes are not going away anytime soon. That's WNYC's Caroline Lewis. Thanks so much, Caroline, for breaking this all down for us. Thanks, Janae. Yeah, it's good to sort of take stock of the whole thing.

And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time.