“For four weeks, nearly 15,000 NYSNA members held the line in the cold and in the snow for safe patient care,” NYSNA president Nancy Hagans said in a statement. “Now, nurses at Montefiore and Mount Sinai systems are heading back to the bedside with our heads held high after winning fair tentative contracts that maintain enforceable safe staffing ratios, improve protections from workplace violence, and maintain health benefits with no additional out-of-pocket costs for frontline nurses.”
In a statement addressed to his staff on Monday, Mount Sinai CEO Dr. Brendan Carr confirmed the tentative agreement and said the striking nurses would return to their posts if and when the contract is approved by the members. He also acknowledged the bitterness of the strike.
“This process has been difficult for all of us. While it has been amazing to once again see Mount Sinai do extraordinary things in order to serve our patients and community, it will take time to rebuild the momentum that we had in the alignment of our organization,” wrote Dr. Carr. “I commit to you that we will heal the organization together in the service of continuing to help people to live longer and better lives.”
Spokespersons for Montefiore did not return a request for comment.
The strike, which began on Jan. 12, is the longest and largest of its kind in New York City history. After 28 days on strike, nurses who spoke to THE CITY said they were inclined to vote to approve the deal and return to work, even if they didn’t get everything they wanted.
Notably, management at Mount Sinai Hospital did not agree to immediately re-hire the three labor and delivery nurses it fired last month in what NYSNA says was retaliation for their union activity. Those three nurses instead will have to arbitrate their firings, according to a source who was briefed on the tentative agreement.
At Mount Sinai, the three-year tentative agreement includes raises of 4% next month, 4% in March 2027, and an additional 4% staggered in January and June of 2028, according to a union fact sheet distributed to the membership that was obtained by THE CITY.
At Montefiore, the base wage increases by $15,000 over the three-year length of the contract.
The hospital had already agreed last month to preserve the union’s premium-free health plan, another major point of contention for the nurses.
“We honestly got most of what we wanted,” said Zara Roy, a recovery nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside. “I’m planning to vote yes.
In a major victory for the union, the tentative agreement preserves the staffing enforcement ratios the union first secured in its last strike in 2023, which was smaller and only lasted three days. Under that agreement, the nurses can arbitrate and secure monetary compensation when they work shifts at understaffed units. To date, Mount Sinai has paid millions to nurses whose units were chronically understaffed.
Still, there was compromise. One Mount Sinai nurse said he was inclined to reject the deal because it did not secure the jobs of the three fired nurses. Both hospitals agreed to hire additional nurses, but it will not hire as many as the union wanted.
The agreement capped off a dramatic bargaining session at the Jacob K. Javits Center over the weekend in which mediators presented their final recommendations to the nurses and all three hospital systems and allegedly threatened to quit, according to a source.
Negotiations between the hospitals and the union picked up and broke down repeatedly over the last month, a feature of a strike that was more bitter than any in recent memory.
The nurses’ union has lodged more than a dozen complaints against the three hospital systems accusing them of violating U.S. labor law, including by retaliating against nurses for organizing. At Mount Sinai, the union accused administrators of unlawfully disciplining — and in some cases firing — pro-union nurses. Mount Sinai, in turn, accused striking nurses of “bullying” travel nurses, a charge the union denies.
Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian have jointly spent approximately $100 million to pay temporary nurses for the duration of the strike, the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group, has said. Meanwhile, striking nurses scrambled to make ends meet, with some collecting unemployment checks and applying for COBRA.
Last week, nurses staged several large demonstrations without the union’s endorsement at Grand Central Terminal and Times Square, marching to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan offices on the east side, and outside the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes. Thirteen nurses were arrested at the latter picket on Thursday, in a show of civil disobedience.
A previous version of this story mischaracterized the tentative raise scale at Mount Sinai facilities.
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