STATEN ISLAND, NY—On Saturday, March 30, 2024, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), announced they reached a Tentative Agreement with Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH). This announcement came just nine days after the nurses delivered a strike notice to management and seventeen days after a rally outside the hospital announced that 97% of Nurses at the hospital voted in favor of a strike.
The issues at hand revolved around not just pay raises that make it possible for the nurses to continue to reside in Staten Island, but also safe staffing—a sufficient number of nurses on staff to give patients the best care possible—which has been an all-too-common fight in the age of for-profit medicine. Going into this fight, the SIUH nurses have talked about lack of retention seeing as wages in Staten Island haven’t kept pace with the rest of New York City.
A ratification vote will begin on April 3rd, after the bargaining committee announces the deal. Full details have not been released yet, but NYSNA has announced that the 3-year deal includes wage increases totaling 22.12% throughout the deal as well as, “improvements to safe staffing standards and stronger safe staffing enforcement. The agreement adds nurse staffing on units that need help and includes an expedited process for creating staffing standards in new units.”
SIUH nurses on the bargaining committee voice their approval including Elaine Minew, RN who in the press release announcing the Tentative Agreement said, “the safe staffing improvements we won in our tentative agreement make Staten Island a better place to live, work, and receive care.” John Vuolo, RN also said, “for too long, Staten Island University Hospital nurses have struggled to stay on our island because our pay was so much lower than what we could make for doing the same work in Brooklyn or Manhattan. Now that we’ve won pay parity, we can afford to stay here in our community where we want to be, caring for our neighbors. That’s a victory for all of Staten Island.”
It cannot be lost on us that this struggle took place shortly after Northwell announced a $19.2 billion merger with Nuvance Health while cutting costs by eliminating pharmacists on the hospital floors of SIUH, forcing nurses away from patient bedsides to find needed medications. This profit-first “healthcare” shines a light on the need for a not-for-profit National Health Service here in the United States. Labor United Educational Leagues resolutely supports the nurses at Staten Island University Hospital and calls for a just healthcare system featuring a not-for-profit National Health Service.
