Mamdani and Sanders Join Picket as N.Y.C. Nurses’ Strike Enters 2nd Week

The New York Times – Tuesday, January 20, 2026
By Jeffrey C. Mays and Joseph Goldstein

Speaking before thousands of striking nurses in Manhattan who were wearing red and waving noisemakers, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Tuesday called for a return to the bargaining table while criticizing the pay of hospital executives.

The walkout by about 15,000 nurses who work in some of New York City’s major hospitals has stretched into a second week, with little evidence that contract talks are making progress.

On Tuesday, the nurses received high-powered support from Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Sanders, who joined the health care workers in front of Mount Sinai West hospital in Midtown.

Mr. Sanders sits on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and during his time as chairman of that panel, he said that many of his conversations with nurses from throughout the United States revolved around their inability to do their jobs safely because of unwieldy patient-to-staff ratios.

“The people of this country are sick and tired of the greed of the health care industry,” Mr. Sanders said in a brief speech on Tuesday in frigid temperatures. “They’re tired of the drug companies ripping us off, the insurance companies ripping us off and hospital executives getting huge salaries. Don’t tell me you can’t provide a good nurse-staff ratio when you’re paying your C.E.O. at NewYork-Presbyterian $26 million.”

He was referring to Dr. Steven Corwin, the outgoing chief executive of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who received $26.3 million in compensation in 2024, according to a public filing.

Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, defended the salary.

“I think Steve Corwin is one of the most outstanding C.E.O.s that I’ve met in the United States — his knowledge, his experience, and he is extraordinarily smart,” Mr. Raske said.

Mr. Mamdani framed the strike as part of his administration’s focus on affordability. For nurses, the walkout is about making sure “that this is a city you don’t just work in but a city that you can also live in.”

Starting pay for nurses at the hospitals is about $120,000, although most make significantly more. NewYork-Presbyterian said that its nurses were paid $163,000, and that the demands from the nurses’ union would lead to a 25 percent increase in pay over three years. The mayor criticized the amount of money — more than $100 million, according to the union — that the hospitals were paying travel nurses to fill in for the striking staff members.

“What this is in fact about is recognizing the worth of each and every nurse in this city,” Mr. Mamdani said. “So I am here to say the same thing that I said on the first day of this strike, which is that we are encouraging everyone to return to that bargaining table.”

The nurses’ union says that since the walkout began nine days ago, its negotiating teams had held one bargaining session with each of the hospitals, most recently on Sunday with Montefiore Medical Center.

“No major progress was made toward settling fair contracts with any of the hospitals,” the union said in a statement.

The strike began on Jan. 12, with nurses walking out of some of the city’s top hospitals, including NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore and the main campus of Mount Sinai Hospital, along with two other hospitals within the Mount Sinai system. It is the largest labor action by nurses in the city in decades. Nurses have endured bitter cold on the picket line as temperatures dropped in recent days.

Both sides are digging in. A smaller nurses strike in 2023 lasted only three days before nurses returned to work, having secured significant gains. But this time the hospitals say they have no intention of agreeing to the medical workers’ demands.

“As of today, despite our best efforts to negotiate, a near-term path to an agreement is very unlikely,” the chief executive of the Mount Sinai Health System, Dr. Brendan G. Carr, wrote in an email to employees on Monday, as the strike entered its second week.

Mount Sinai has claimed that cracks have emerged in the nurses’ resolve. From the start, about 20 percent of nurses declined to join the strike and instead reported to work, according to figures provided by Mount Sinai. That number grew to 23 percent after a few days of striking, according to the hospital.

The union, however, has urged the public to be skeptical of the claim that so many nurses have returned to work. “We have an overwhelming majority of our members signed up for picket line shifts every single day,” the union, the New York State Nurses Association, said in a statement.

And union officials, for their part, claimed Mount Sinai had been “aggressively union busting,” and that it had been disciplining nurses — including firing several — for union activities or to intimidate other workers.

In his message, Dr. Carr tried to drive a wedge between the nurses and their union. Dr. Carr, who ran Mount Sinai’s emergency department during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and became the head of the health system in early 2024, told nurses that if they wanted to return to work in the near future, now was their best chance.

He noted that the hospital had “made additional commitments to working with our agency nurses” — the temporary nurses who had been hired to care for patients during the strike. That meant, he said, that even when a deal was reached with the union, it might be “several days or weeks” before union nurses were permitted to return to work.

Here’s what to know about the strike:

What are the latest developments?

Negotiators for the union and each of the hospital systems have made little progress. On Friday, negotiators for Mount Sinai Hospital attended a bargaining session for 11 hours, according to the hospital.

“After little progress was made at either table, the mediators told the parties to break,” Dr. Carr wrote, referring to the negotiating session. As of Monday, he wrote, it was unclear when the two sides would next meet.

Why are the nurses striking?

The nurses have a range of complaints. For years, they have said that many hospital units are chronically understaffed, leaving nurses with too many patients to care for all of them properly. But in recent years, the situation has improved, partly because of the smaller strike in 2023. More nurses were hired, and new nurse-patient ratios were introduced, with penalties imposed on hospitals if they violated the staffing rules.

But hospitals have sought to challenge those gains, in court and at the bargaining table, according to the nurses’ union.

The nurses are also demanding that hospitals increase security at hospital entrances to reduce workplace violence and the risk of mass shootings. Many also want security personnel to take a more active role when patients threaten nurses or attack them.

The nurses also want job security guarantees as hospitals expand the use of artificial intelligence in medical settings.

They are also seeking pay raises.

Hospital officials said the hospitals affected by the strike were open and running smoothly and that they were continuing to accept new patients.

How long might the strike last?

The last time nurses in New York City went on strike, in January 2023, the walkout lasted three days. The hospitals may have been surprised at the time: Nurses at a city hospital hadn’t gone on strike in 25 years, according to union officials.

And that strike came against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, when health care workers were hailed as heroes.

But the memory of the pandemic has receded for many.

The hospitals seem more prepared and resolved this time to fight the nurses’ demands. They are spending tens of millions of dollars, at least, on short-term travel nurses. The hospitals, anticipating lean years ahead because of Trump administration policies that will leave New Yorkers uninsured and will reduce federal health care spending in New York State by billions of dollars, say they cannot afford to meet the union’s demands.

For their part, the nurses point to the huge salaries and payouts that senior leaders at top hospitals have received, including the $26 million paid to Dr. Corwin at NewYork-Presbyterian.

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