It’s been over two months since the employment contract has lapsed for New York City’s public nurses without a resolution in sight. Now they say it’s time for the city to pay up in order to turn around the hospital system’s staffing crisis. Hundreds of nurses represented by the New York State Nurses Association, the state’s largest nursing union, rallied on Wednesday with supportive political leaders in Foley Square to demand pay raises that could help public hospitals compete with the private sector in hiring.
At the rally, NYSNA nurses and officials made a fiscal case for a raise. The union reported that there are nearly 2,000 nursing vacancies at NYC Health + Hospitals facilities and that during the process of bargaining they found that just within the first three months of 2022, city hospitals spent $197 million on travel nurses, temporary hires that understaffed facilities bring on at exorbitant pay rates to fill the gaps in coverage.
