Nurses describe escalating tension as NYC strike continues

POLITICO – Friday, January 16, 2026
By Maya Kaufman

NEW YORK — Well before nearly 15,000 nurses across New York City went on strike this week, tensions were already roiling in the powerful private hospitals that employ them.

Their union, the New York State Nurses Association, discovered the Mount Sinai Health System had changed the locks to its on-site offices at two facilities where negotiations were stalled.

Mount Sinai characterized the move as part of “considerable” security measures to minimize disruption during the strike. When some of the same Mount Sinai nurses went on strike three years ago, their strike leaders hid in the union’s offices overnight and created “significant disruption,” according to the health system.

“There was no way we were going to let that happen again,” Mount Sinai spokesperson Lucia Lee told POLITICO in response to a list of questions for this story.

A union spokesperson told POLITICO the locks were changed on Jan. 5, one full week before the strike even began. Mount Sinai did not confirm or deny the timing.

Nurses are voicing their growing frustration online and on the picket line as they mark five days on strike from jobs with Mount Sinai and the New York-Presbyterian and Montefiore health systems. Their grievances now include not just their workplace conditions and health insurance but also how their employers are reacting to the strike.

The union has lined up vigorous support from elected officials, most notably Mayor Zohran Mamdani, to put pressure on the hospitals and even asked the National Labor Relations Board to intervene. But there’s little indication heading into the holiday weekend that the strike is anywhere close to ending. Negotiations with New York-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai resumed Thursday night and Friday after a dayslong break, while Montefiore has yet to return to the table.

“New York City’s richest hospitals decided to declare war on nurses and our patients,” the union wrote in a lengthy statement to reporters Wednesday.

That same day, Mount Sinai CEO Brendan Carr accused the union of “threatening and intimidating nurses” who crossed the picket line in a statement disseminated to reporters. Carr doubled down in a video posted the following day on YouTube, saying the union has been “aggressively harassing” nurses who are going to work.

Montefiore nurses bristled at a New York Post “exclusive” that described them as opposed to “tougher disciplinary actions against inebriated hospital workers” — an apparent reference to a union proposal for new initiatives to foster open dialogue about substance use disorders and support nurses in recovery for addiction, which had already been rescinded.

A public post about the strike by a Montefiore nurse executive fueled additional outrage as it circulated among union members. The LinkedIn post by Una Hopkins, the director of research for Montefiore’s nursing leadership team, was hashtagged “reckless.”

“Transitioning from unionionized staff to skilled travel nurses who prioritize patient care and safety was eye-opening,” Hopkins wrote in the since-deleted post, which POLITICO reviewed before it was taken down. “Seeing coordinated, compassionate, and collaborative care delivered so seamlessly reinforced an important truth: PROFESSIONAL NURSING stands on its own — without union interference.”

“I don’t wish poorly on those that chose to abandon patients. I wish for you a reflective moment …. Why did you become a NURSE?” Hopkins added in the post. “Stand up to the bully’s [sic] that led you in this direction.”

Bryan Lesswing, a Montefiore spokesperson, did not immediately return a request for comment on Hopkins’ post. He also did not answer questions about whether Montefiore ordered Hopkins to delete the post or took any disciplinary measures.

New York-Presbyterian says nurses who earn average annual compensation of $163,000 are asking for a 25-percent salary increase over three years. Mount Sinai says its nurses earn $162,000 on average and would take home an average of $250,000 after three years under the union’s latest proposal. Montefiore claims that nurses want raises of nearly 40 percent, at a cost of $3.6 billion.

The union argues the health systems are exaggerating their requests but has not provided comparable figures. The nurses’ recently expired three-year contracts, most of which are publicly available, show the typical nurse earned about $120,000 last year excluding overtime and add-ons for night shifts, advanced degrees and years of experience. Specialized nurses, such as nurses certified to administer anesthesia, tend to earn much more.

The union slightly lowered its initial request for annual 10-percent raises at all of the hospitals. Mount Sinai, Montefiore and New York-Presbyterian are offering annual $4,500 increases to nurses’ salary and benefits — arguing it is all they can afford, due to the expected multibillion-dollar revenue hit of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

But Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, the union’s former president and a Montefiore nurse who is part of the negotiating team, said the chief sticking point is staffing ratios. Montefiore and Mount Sinai nurses won contractual language after the nurses’ 2023 strike that set nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in each unit and mandated binding arbitration of understaffing allegations. That language has resulted in the two health systems paying millions of dollars for violations.

Sheridan-Gonzalez said the hospitals are intent on rolling those protections back.

“They want to eviscerate our staffing language — it’s about that, not money,” she told POLITICO. “We have to leverage our wage demands to get them to talk about these other issues.”

Sheridan-Gonzalez and other Montefiore nurses who are at the negotiating table said the meetings have felt tenser than they did during the 2023 strike — partly due to who’s sitting across from them.

This time around, Montefiore’s negotiating team includes former state Assemblymember Latoya Joyner, who chaired the chamber’s labor committee and was publicly allied with the New York State Nurses Association at the time that Montefiore nurses were negotiating their last contract. Joyner abruptly resigned in January 2024 to join Montefiore as a senior labor adviser, becoming the third Bronx Democratic politician in recent history to join the borough’s biggest employer.

It is unclear when nurses will resume negotiations with Montefiore. No sessions were scheduled as of midday Friday, according to the union and a health system spokesperson.

New York-Presbyterian nurses met with management and a mediator Thursday night for their first negotiating session since the strike began. Negotiations continued past midnight but yielded little progress, according to the union.

Angela Karafazli, a New York-Presbyterian spokesperson, said the discussions focused on staffing but the union’s proposals “remain unreasonable.”

“While we continue to be far apart, we are committed to bargaining in good faith,” Karafazli said in a statement. “We are committed to safe staffing and have the best staffing ratios in the city.”

Nurses from Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West and the Mount Sinai Hospital are meeting today with mediators and management.

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