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Nurses Protest Contract Negotiations

Contract negotiations are heating up for nurses at some of the city’s largest hospitals, including Mt. Sinai, New York-Presbyterian and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.

by Fred Mogul

NEW YORK, NY February 28, 2008 —Yesterday, outside St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, nurses conducted “informational picketing” to tell their side of the story.

WNYC’s Fred Mogul has more.

St. Vincent’s nurses say in order to help the hospital get through bankruptcy proceedings 3 years ago, they settled for smaller raises. Now they want to make up for it, says Eileen Dunn, the head of the nurses union at St. Vincent's.

DUNN: Our pay is not equivalent to a lot of the other hospitals. The nurses gave up a lot for the hospital because they wanted to see St. Vincent's succeed through the bankruptcy.

St. Vincent’s declined to comment on negotiations, which have been going on since December.

Nationwide, a chronic labor shortage has increased nurses’ wages in recent years, but those increases have been leveling off.

Hospitals typically say they're struggling to deal with reimbursement cuts from the government and private insurers. Unions say salaries for executives and some medical specialists have skyrocketed at many institutions.

For WNYC, I’m Fred Mogul.