New York nurses want a fair contract for themselves

On the streets of New York, it’s the season of twinkling lights. In the pediatric emergency room where we work, it’s the time of coughs and high fevers.

The worst flu wave ever recorded in our state is upon us, heralded by the lines of sick children and worried parents streaming through our doors. Some get just a little Tylenol to bring down their fever, but many need breathing treatments because the combination of the flu and winter colds triggered their asthma. Others may need an IV to prevent dehydration. A few – children with weak immune systems, who have undergone multiple organ transplants or who have a history of intubation – are in real danger and are destined for the intensive care unit. Of course, we all take them, even when we lack blankets and sometimes beds.

When midnight struck last Thursday, the ball dropped in Times Square and 2026 began, this dissonance between celebration outside and struggle inside our hospital walls took on a new dimension, as contracts covering us and 20,000 other registered nurses expired.

It’s a familiar tune, like the tunes from “Auld Lang Syne.”

Three years ago, when we were just a few months into our nursing careers, NYSNA nurses at two New York City hospitals, including ours, went on strike. This was right after the COVID-19 crisis, a public health emergency where nurses across the country established our worth and value beyond doubt. At least we thought we did. Local hospital leaders have resisted our pressure for standards of staff safety and respect in the workplace. The resulting strike lasted three days and resulted in historic contract provisions governing enforceable nurse-to-patient ratios.

Now, an even larger strike looms, involving up to 12 New York City hospitals. There are new issues to address, like the appropriate role of AI in healthcare, the growing threat of violence facing healthcare workers, and the impact of the Trump administration’s policies on our undocumented and transgender patients. Staff safety and health benefits for caregivers remain major concerns.

Hospital management made it clear that its negotiating goal was not a fair compromise. They intend to reduce the power of our collective voice. Hospital management sanctioned more than a dozen union leaders for exercising our right to talk to colleagues about our union and our right to talk about workplace violence in the press. They have trucked in dozens of replacement nurses with high hourly wages, forced union nurses to train our own replacements, and threatened to deduct from our contract the tens of millions of dollars they are preparing to spend on scab salaries if we strike.

Just weeks after a gunman showed up in our emergency room intending to shoot people, hospital leaders refused to negotiate workplace safety improvements.

They also pushed to roll back historic, enforceable staff safety protections that we fought for and won when we went on strike in 2023. These staffing enforcement actions are working: In 2024, independent arbitrators awarded understaffed Mount Sinai nurses approximately $4.7 million in financial relief in nine separate decisions.

There’s no denying that federal Medicaid cuts pose a challenge for hospitals. But it is the hospitals benefiting from the safety net of the peripheral districts which will suffer the most from these cuts, and not our wealthy academic establishments. As of September 2025, Mount Sinai had more than double the cash flow it had in 2017, even adjusting for inflation: nearly $600 million. During the first three months of 2025, Mount Sinai Health System recorded more than $1.2 billion in revenue from our hospital, a 20% increase over the same period last year. Now, Mount Sinai plans to spend $100 million on a dedicated AI building.

Hospitals must always look for new ways to provide better care to more people. But guess what? Hiring enough nurses, guaranteeing nurses health benefits and protecting ourselves from workplace violence: these are also investments.

We hope that our hospital and its 11 city counterparts will realize that nurses and our patients are worth such an investment. Ideally, we will achieve this without going on strike again. But if we have to strike, we will, because nurses are doing what it takes to protect our patients.

We will do it tonight, ready to wipe our noses or save a life, explain a medicine or hold hands, always looking for another cover.

Carey and Murphy are members of the New York State Nurses Association and pediatric emergency room nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital. The opinions expressed here are their own and not those of Mount Sinai.