15,000 nurses walk out on big-business hospitals in NYC
Some 15,000 nurses at the biggest and richest hospital empires in New York City walked out in what the New York State Nurses Association (NYNSA) is calling an “Unfair Labor Practice strike” that began at 6 a.m. on Jan. 12. It is the largest nurses’ strike in the history of the city.
Nurses at Mt. Sinai hospital on picket line, Jan. 12, 2026. WW Photo: Ellen Catalinotto
In a news release, NYSNA underlined “management’s refusal to ensure safety for nurses and patients. After months of bargaining, management refused to make meaningful progress on core issues that nurses have been fighting for: safe staffing for patients, health care benefits for nurses and workplace violence protections. …
“Management at the richest hospitals in New York City are threatening to discontinue or radically cut nurses’ health benefits. These cuts would impact not just striking nurses at Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Morningside and West and NewYork-Presbyterian but also nearly 27,000 nurses at over 50 hospitals around the state who are enrolled in NYSNA’s health benefit plan.”
The eight safety-net hospitals in the city and Northwell Health’s three hospitals on Long Island all reached tentative agreements with nurses, which made strikes unnecessary. “New York City’s wealthiest academic hospitals are forcing nurses out on strike and refusing to agree to NYSNA’s proposal to continue nurses’ health benefits,” the NYSNA reported.
NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said: “Unfortunately, greedy hospital executives have decided to put profits above safe patient care and force nurses out on strike when we would rather be at the bedsides of our patients. Hospital management refuses to address our most important issues — patient and nurse safety,” apparently referring to the hospitals’ spending large sums of money to hire traveling nurses to attempt to break the strike.
Hagans continued: “It is shameful that the city’s richest hospitals refuse to continue health care benefits for frontline nurses, refuse to staff safely for our patients and refuse to protect us from workplace violence. It is deeply offensive that they would rather use their billions to fight against their own nurses than settle a fair contract. Nurses do not want to strike, but our bosses have forced us out on strike.”
