15,000 Nurses Are on Strike in NYC
UFT must not continue to stay quiet about it.
CLICK HERE to donate to the NYSNA Strike Hardship Fund
We want to say something plainly:
New York City nurses are out on strike right now. This is historic.
As of early February, nearly 15,000 nurses represented by NYSNA are on strike at major private hospital systems across the city. They are striking at hospitals New Yorkers know well:
Mount Sinai Hospital
Mount Sinai Morningside
Mount Sinai West
Montefiore in the Bronx
NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia
This isn’t isolated. This is citywide.
This strike is now in its fourth week.
That alone should stop us all in our tracks.
These are the people who take care of us when we’re at our most vulnerable. The people who held hospitals together through COVID, through impossible staffing, through violence and burnout and exhaustion.
And they are saying: Enough.
They are fighting for safe staffing. For decent benefits. For protection from workplace violence.
For the ability to do their jobs without being destroyed by them.
And get this: Montefiore cut off nurses’ health benefits because they’re striking.
Just think about that.
A hospital, a place that is literally supposed to care for people, is using healthcare as a weapon against the workers who provide it. That’s disgusting and speaks to the values of those who run these hospitals. These are not people who care about their employees, let alone their patients.
We Have to Ask: Where Is Our Union?
We are UFT members. Many of us have spent our lives in schools, in public service, in union work. So we’re saying this as people who believe in unions deeply:
The silence from UFT leadership right now is hard to understand.
Because this is what solidarity is supposed to be for. If 15,000 nurses can put everything on the line for safe patient care, the least the rest of us can do is speak up.
Educators and nurses are in the same struggle. We know what it feels like to be overworked, understaffed, disrespected, told to “do more with less,” and expected to sacrifice endlessly because we care. That care gets exploited. And nurses are drawing a line. We are proud of and inspired by them.
So Here’s What We’re Asking:
If you can give something — even a small amount — please consider contributing to the NYSNA Strike Fund. Not as charity. As solidarity. As one working person helping another hold the line. Even $10 or $25 matters.
Here’s the link to donate:
https://nysna.tfaforms.net/5110966
We don’t want to live in a city where nurses have to strike to keep patients safe. And we don’t want to be part of a labor movement that stays quiet when workers are being punished for standing up.
The nurses are fighting. We should all be standing with them.
The point about Montefiore cutting healthcare to striking nurses is wild to me. A hospital weaponizing health benefits against its own staff really exposes how these insitutions prioritize profit over both workers and patients. The call for UFT solidarty makes sense when you think about how educators and nurses face the same exploitaton of their care labor.