What Did NYC's Historic Nurses Strike Achieve?

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FEATURING DANIA MUÑOZ - New York City’s largest nurses strike, numbering at about 15,000 at its peak, is coming to an end–at least for a majority of striking nurses. Nurses from multiple hospitals have been picketing for a month in what was the second major strike in three years. Now, those working at Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Mount Sinai Morningside and West hospitals ratified an offer, while more than 4,000 nurses at New York Presbyterian hospital voted to continue their strike, now in its sixth week. 

Meanwhile, in Southern California, tens of thousands of nurses at Kaiser Permanente are also in their fourth week of striking.

Dania Muñoz, a Nurse Practitioner at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and a member of the New York State Nurses Association spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the strike and what it achieved.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let's first start with the reason why nurses went on strike. As I mentioned at it’s peak, 15,000 people were on strike at pickets around the New York city area. What was the main reason for the strike? 

Dania Muñoz: There were a couple of reasons why we went on strike, but the main one I would say was because of health insurance. Before we went on strike, before we dropped our 10-day notice, we were notified that our insurance was going to be a problem for our employers to continue to pay for. And that basically forced us to go on strike. They wanted us to, you know, to make cuts to our insurance, to the point where there was gonna potentially be premiums and co-insurance and just a lot of things that we weren't used to doing and paying for when it comes to insurances for nurses, at least in the facilities that we work in. So that was one of the major things that pushed nurses to strike, honestly. 

Also our pension, even though the rates for the pensions were known the hospitals did not wanna sign off on those rates, and that made us question whether they were gonna continue our pension or not.