The union representing the nurses, United Steelworkers Local 4-200, has been unable to reach a deal on a new contract with the hospital. Their most recent three-year agreement expired at the end of June, and the union recently gave the hospital a 10-day warning ahead of the strike.
Judy Danella, a nurse who serves as the union’s president, said that members rejected an earlier tentative agreement, and that the hospital came back this week with another proposal that made little improvement.
The roughly 1,700 nurses covered by the contract did not vote on the latest offer, according to Danella.
“They were like, ‘Why would we re-vote on something we already voted on?’” she said. “The counter-offer is the same as it was” before.
A spokesperson for the hospital said it had done “everything it could to avoid a strike,” and that it was among “the highest staffed hospitals in the state.”
“We twice accepted the Union’s demands. We offered to go to arbitration or submit to a board of inquiry, and the Union rejected both,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Even after we extended a new offer on Wednesday that would have further addressed their staffing concerns, it was met with silence.”
Picketing was scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. Friday.
Video from New York’s ABC7 showed a throng of nurses in blue union shirts outside the hospital cheering.
Danella said sticking points that remain in negotiations include annual pay raises, employee health care costs and nurse-to-patient ratios in the critical care unit.
The union has asked that there be no more than two patients for each nurse in critical care except under certain circumstances, similar to a new rule drafted by New York’s health department. Danella said the hospital wants the ability to suspend the ratio when nurses call in sick, a demand the union wouldn’t accept.
She also said the union and the hospital haven’t come to terms on pay increases or caps on annual health care cost increases. Roughly 75% of members voted down a previous tentative agreement that included 4% annual cost-of-living bumps, she said.
Several strikes have hit U.S. health care providers this year. Nurses in particular say they’re overstretched and underpaid in the wake of the pandemic. With their services in high demand, many are calling not only for pay increases but also for lighter patient loads. Nurses say staffing issues have generally gotten worse.
The hospital has said it plans to bring in contract nurses to replace strikers during the work stoppage. Danella said members saw busloads of what appeared to be replacement nurses earlier this week.
“They started arriving on Monday,” she said.
This story has been updated with comment from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
