NYC nurses strike enters second day as hospitals move to fill labor gaps

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NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New York City nurses were set to return to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day.

The walkout, which comes during a severe flu season, involved roughly 15,000 nurses spread out across multiple private hospitals, including NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai hospital.

The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.

The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.

As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for manageable, safe workloads.

The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they’ve made strides in staffing in recent years, and have cast the union’s demands as prohibitively expensive.

On Monday, the city's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union’s members for seeking “dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve.”