In recent months, the Bronx and its hospital campuses have become a rallying ground for city nurses looking to improve their working conditions.
And it makes sense given the borough’s rich history of nursing dating back to 1898, when the Lincoln School for Nurses, an all-girls school in the Bronx, gave Black and immigrant women from the Caribbean and Africa a pathway to the health care profession.
More than 1,800 women graduated from that Lincoln before it closed in 1961, and the Bronx workforce has been heavily represented in the city’s health care industry with as many as 65,000 boroughwide health care workers pre-pandemic.
But modern day nursing in NYC has been rife with labor issues — exacerbated by COVID-19 — revolving around evergreen calls for better staffing and livable wages.
In early January, a three-day strike by private sector nurses at Montefiore led to a substantial wage increase of 19% and increased staffing levels. Two months later, in front Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, public sector nurses echoed familiar rallying cries, hoping to address a near-$19,000 pay disparity between them and their private nurse peers.
Lincoln Hospital, as well as Jacobi Medical Center, are two of 11-city run hospitals facing expiring union contracts Thursday, with more than 9,000 Health + Hospital and mayoral nurses — who provide direct care to the city’s first responders — across the city being represented by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA).
When Musu King, a seven-year nurse at Lincoln Hospital and NYSNA’s local bargaining unit president, isn’t caring for patients, he’s caring for his three daughters, one of whom has a disability.
While other NYC Health + Hospitals nurses said that they pick up extra shifts at private hospitals for more money, King said that’s not a possibility, but he’s also recently struggled to pay $150 co-pays for his daughter’s emergency room visits.
“Other nurses pick up extra agency shifts at…
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