In early January, physicians represented by the Doctors Councils SEIU voted to strike on January 13th after working without a contract for four months. The union represents thousands of frontline workers in NYC. Nearly 1,000 planned to walk out from Jacobi Medical Center, North Central Bronx, Queens Hospital Center, and South Brooklyn Health. Their demands were better pay and benefits to address the understaffing crisis.
In response, NYC H+H resumed contract negotiations, leading to the work stoppage being postponed. On January 13th, a joint hearing was held by the City Council Committees on Hospitals, Health and Civil Service and Labor. According to the union, since September 2024, over 2,500 physicians have been fighting for a better contract. If an agreement was not reached, the strike would have commenced on January 21st. It would have been the largest strike of healthcare workers in New York.
The union reached an agreement with H+H which includes significant base salary increases, a bonus for time served on the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, rollbacks on cuts to sick leave hours, retention bonuses for designated specialties, benefit fund contributions to supplement members’ health benefits, reimbursement increases for continuing medical education and Juneteenth as a paid holiday.
The President of Doctors Councils SEIU stated that H+H has made short-sighted and rushed decisions without the input of frontline doctors, which leads to more doctors leaving and exacerbating short staffing and unsafe workloads. Over half of the doctors are working paycheck to paycheck.
In 2023, Elmhurst residents went on strike. They were the first resident physicians to strike in NYC in 33 years. Later that year, Morningside and West physicians voted to strike after 6 months of bargaining but reached a tentative agreement with Mount Sinai. It is commonplace for healthcare workers to suffer extreme stress and burnout from working long hours in understaffed facilities. On top of this, their wages do not keep up with the cost of living or cover student loan debt. This endangers the lives of patients who do not receive the quality of care they deserve. So long as these issues persist, future strike actions are not off the table.
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