NYC Health + Hospitals nurses win historic pay raise in new union contract

Public-sector nurses at NYC Health + Hospitals are getting their biggest pay bump ever after an arbitrator intervened in stalled contract negotiations with the city’s hospital system and labor officials. On Monday afternoon, the arbitrator made a binding decision to award the nurses a contract that will increase their pay by about 37% over five-and-a-half years.

The New York State Nurses Association, the nurses' union, says the win will put the nurses’ salaries on par with their private-sector counterparts and make it easier to fill some 2,000 vacancies across the public hospital system.

“I feel that we have accomplished a great victory for our nurses, but more so for the patients and the communities that we serve,” said Sonia Lawrence, president of NYSNA’s executive council for NYC Health + Hospitals/Mayorals. “The underserved, the uninsured, the underinsured, the undocumented, the asylum-seekers – I think it's a victory for all patients that have been discriminated against.”

NYC Health + Hospitals nurses, who currently make a starting salary of $84,744, are voting on whether to endorse the whole contract this week, but the pay terms are already in effect due to the conditions of the arbitration.

Under the new deal, their salaries will jump $16,006 in the first year of the contract and $5,551 in the second year, according to NYSNA. The nurses will receive more modest raises of about 3% in each of the remaining years of the contract. The deal also requires hospital officials to improve nurse staffing levels and hire more mediators to address disputes over staffing on different units.

High turnover among nursing staff has been a major challenge for all New York City hospitals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and other health care institutions have agreed to significant raises in recent union contracts.

Dr. Mitchell Katz, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, testified at a City Council hearing in March that the gap between public and private sector pay – which amounts to nearly $20,000 for new nursing graduates – has exacerbated staffing challenges at NYC Health + Hospitals and increased the system’s reliance on temporary nursing staff. In 2022, the city spent $549 million to hire temporary nurses to fill about 2,000 vacancies across the NYC Health + Hospitals system, Katz revealed at a separate City Council hearing in May.

At the hearings, Katz supported NYSNA’s efforts to boost salaries for permanent hospital staff, but he was not a member of the bargaining committee that negotiated with the union over the new contract.

Katz praised the new deal with NYSNA in a statement shared with Gothamist on Tuesday.

“We’re pleased an [arbitration] award was issued swiftly to allow us to move forward with effective recruiting, and help with the retention of our dedicated nurses,” Katz said. “We know this decision will encourage more nurses to join our health system, and contribute to our mission of helping all New Yorkers regardless of their ability to pay or immigration status.”

Some city officials were harder to convince of the need for pay parity, according to Lawrence. Renee Campion, commissioner of the city’s Office of Labor Relations, expressed mixed feelings about the deal in her own statement.

“Since we began negotiations with NYSNA back in February, we strove to reach a voluntary agreement that would recognize the extraordinary sacrifices the more than 8,000 city nurses have made while ensuring an agreement was fair to the city’s taxpayers,” Campion said.

Campion added that she was “disappointed” that the arbitrator did not share the city government’s position that the nurses’ contract should conform to the same incremental pattern of wage increases provided to other city employees.

But she said she was “hopeful this award will reduce reliance on temporary nurses.”

A spokesperson for City Hall did not immediately respond to a question on Tuesday about how much the pay increases would cost taxpayers overall.

This story was updated to correct what the nurses are voting on this week.