More than 160 resident physicians at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens are preparing to go on strike for five days starting on Monday if they don’t reach a new contract agreement before then. This is the second time doctors-in-training with the union CIR SEIU have threatened to strike at Queens-based hospitals this month over wage increases.
Elmhurst is part of the NYC Health + Hospitals network, and public employees are technically not allowed to go on strike in New York state. But CIR said this law doesn’t apply to the residents at Elmhurst because its doctor training program is operated by Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, which acts as their employer.
The residents at Elmhurst, which operates 545 beds, said they get paid significantly less than their peers in a similar program at Mount Sinai’s main campus in Manhattan and are demanding pay parity. They’ve now been trying to reach an agreement with Mount Sinai for about a year. They delivered a letter on Thursday to the hospital’s CEO — Helen Arteaga Landaverde — asking her to come to the bargaining table.
First-year residents at Elmhurst now earn $68,355, nearly $7,000 less than first-year residents at Mount Sinai Hospital, according to data provided by CIR SEIU. The pay gap is more than $11,000 for seventh-year residents. In July, Mount Sinai Hospital residents will receive a 6% pay bump, widening the disparity even further.
“It feels like the Elmhurst community and the resident doctors at Elmhurst who take care of the patients don’t matter to Mount Sinai or to our city,” said Dr. Irfa Khan, a second-year psychiatry resident at Elmhurst.
Neither Mount Sinai, NYC Health + Hospitals nor CIR SEIU responded to a request for comment on the current salary offer that’s on the table for Elmhurst residents in the new contract.
Although NYC Health + Hospitals doesn’t employ the Elmhurst residents directly, the city gives Mount Sinai money to fund the program, and it is ultimately up to city…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply