New York City public hospital nurses rally outside Elmhurst Hospital on June 22, demanding a new contract and pay equity.
Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) nurses rallied outside multiple major New York City public hospitals on June 22, including at Elmhurst Hospital, to demand a new contract and pay equity.
The simultaneous rallies were part of planned protests throughout the next two weeks in which nurses are calling on Mayor Eric Adams “to do the right thing for racial and healthcare justice for New Yorkers” and settle a fair contract.
New York City public hospital nurses, who have been without a contract since March 2, earn around $20,000 less than their counterparts in the private sector, and the pay disparity makes it difficult to hire new nurses and retain nurses, leading to chronic understaffing at NYC public hospitals, according to NYSNA.
NYSNA says the city could easily afford to pay public hospital nurses what they deserve if it stopped hiring travel nurses to combat understaffing and high turnover and save hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 2022, NYC Health + Hospitals (NYC H+H), which operates the public hospitals and clinics in New York City, spent $549 million on traveling nurses. The average hourly rate for temp nurses is $163.50, nearly 3.5 times what staff nurses make. However, according to Politico, the city corrected the number after NYC Comptroller Brad Lander addressed his concerns about out-of-control spending in a letter to NYC H+H on June 6.
Even using the city’s lower number, NYC spends at least $1.5 million on temp nurses every day that they fail to settle a fair contract that keeps qualified staff nurses at the bedside, NYSNA said in a statement.
And the city is already on track to exceed last year’s figure, having already spent $401.8 million on temporary travel nurses in the first few months of fiscal year 2023.
Outside Elmhurst Hospital, which was the “epicenter of the…
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