NYC Health+Hospital nurses are fed up and demanded Mayor Eric Adams finally pay public hospital nurses their fair share at a rally for pay equity and racial justice outside Bellevue Hospital on June 7.
The public sector nurses demand the city settle a fair contract with the nurses, ensuring the recruitment of new nurses and retaining nurses.
Nurses at private hospitals earn about $19,000 to $20,000 more a year than public hospital nurses. Mercedes Cruz, who has worked as a registered nurse at Bellevue for 30 years and is the head nurse, explained that the wage disparity made it difficult to retain or recruit new nurses and that many of her colleagues work two jobs to make ends meet.
Health+Hospital nurses have been working without a contract since March 2, and Cruz said that equal pay had to be put back into the contract.
“We’re trying to get parity,” Cruz said. “Once we get parity, we can get safe staffing.”
9,000 public sector nurses care for NYC’s most vulnerable patients at New York City’s 11 public hospitals. Many patients don’t have access to affordable healthcare and live in low-income neighborhoods. The chronic understaffing at New York City’s public hospitals means that patients often don’t receive the required care because nurses have to divide their time between 7 or 8, sometimes 10 patients.
Sonia Lawrence, RN and president of NYSNA’s NYC Health+Hospital wants to mayor to listen to the plight of the nurses.
“We are sick and tired of being asked to do more with less,” Lawrence said and called out the city for spending money on traveling nurses.
NYC spent over half a billion dollars on traveling nurses to combat understaffing at public hospitals in 2022. Advocates say the city could save hundreds of millions of dollars and solve the crisis of high turnover and chronic understaffing if it raised the pay for public hospital nurses instead of paying traveling nurses who some say are only in it for the money.
“We know the city can afford to raise pay for public hospital nurses so that we can afford to stay at the bedside and so that all of our patients can get the care they need,” Lawrence said.
Nurses, who worked the frontlines during COVID-19, while most New Yorkers telecommuted from the convenience of their homes, were celebrated as heroes every day at 7 pm during the pandemic when people came out to bang pots and pans in appreciation, now feel they are left out in the cold.
“You know, with the banging of pots. What happened to that appreciation?” Cruz asked. “We need that now. Show us the money. Not the pots and pans anymore.”
After the rally, nurses tried to enter Bellevue Hospital and clashed with New York Hospital Police officers trying to prevent the nurses from entering the premises to stage a second sit-in -a sit-in inside Bellevue before the rally began was peaceful. One officer even pushed a nurse back. A handful of nurses were able to enter the hospital while their colleagues cheered them on, though still shocked at the hostility they had encountered.
Reverend Kirsten John Foy, with the “Ark of Justice,” witnessed the altercation.
“We cannot allow the violent actions of a few hospital police to derail what is a moral cause, which is pay equity for public sector nurses,” John Foy said. “It has been long overdue.”
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