Starting on January 12th, the largest nursing strike has been taking place in New York City.  15,000 nurses from various hospitals all around New York including Mount Sinai, New York Presbyterian, and Montefiore have been fighting for workplace violence protection, safe ratios in staffing, and better benefits in healthcare.

The nurses have stated that their main priority is keeping their patients safe and healthy and the current layout of the system does not allow this to occur the way that it should.  Too many patients are on each floor of these hospitals and an uneven ratio of nurses to patients means that employees in charge of each person are given a very heavy workload, more than expected. This has been one of the biggest points discussed while negotiating an end to this strike.  Nurses believe that these changes are critical to patient care and treatment and it is something that needs to be done for the good of the people and the city of New York.

A few days after the strike began, the nurses union and the hospitals were able to come to an agreement to maintain healthcare benefits but no progress has been made since.  Every other request made by the union is in discussion but no results have come from it.  At least 13 nurses have been arrested during the strikes for different reasons.

On January 21st, the union met with Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, all sides agreed that they would be willing to start negotiations but nothing came from these meetings.  Mamdani has seemed to side with the Governor on many matters involving the strike.  As of now, hospitals have been employing out-of-state healthcare workers to fill in for the nurses taking the strike.  This strike has been taking place for just about four weeks. The nurses are prepared to continue this strike for as long as it takes to improve the care of their patients and New York’s healthcare system as a whole.