ontract campaign ends in Staffing Gains!

ing to pay whatever NYSNA Plan A would cost. Other hospitals followed suit, and the trustees agreed to increase the amount they pay into the plan to keep our quality healthcare coverage.

With escalating pressure and momentum from the healthcare win, NewYork-Presbyterian was the first hospital to crumble, delivering a tentative agreement that improved staffing standards and enforcement; protected healthcare benefits; and increased salaries by 7%, 6% and 5%, respectively, during the three-year contract period. Several other hospitals soon followed that pattern: BronxCare Health System, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Maimonides Medical Center, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Richmond University Medical Center, The Brooklyn Hospital Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.

Montefiore and Mount sinai Hold out

Executives at Montefiore and Mount Sinai instead dug in. Mount Sinai’s chief nursing officer insisted often and publicly that there would never be staffing ratios at the hospital. Montefiore bosses claimed it would be impossible to include Emergency Department ratios in the contract or invest in reopening units or preserving community health services. They tried to go on the media offensive, claiming that NYSNA nurses were being unreasonable by