Nearly 15,000 nurses go on strike at NYC hospitals

NY Times -   Nearly 15,000 nurses went on strike Monday at some of New York City’s top hospitals, setting the stage for what could be one of the biggest labor showdowns in the city’s health care industry in decades.

The union representing the nurses says a strike is necessary to force hospitals to ensure minimum staffing ratios so that nurses aren’t overwhelmed with too many patients. They are also demanding higher wages and more security at hospitals to reduce violent episodes and shootings.

... For weeks, hospital executives had been preparing to keep hospitals running and medical care accessible in the event of a strike. They secured contracts with staffing agencies to provide travel nurses and reserved hotel rooms for them, according to officials at the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group.

Some hospitals canceled scheduled surgeries and accelerated discharges during the weekend to reduce patient counts because of the prospect of a strike. The affected hospitals arranged to transfer infants out of their neonatal intensive care units to units elsewhere, according to Elisabeth R. Wynn, an executive vice president at the hospital association.

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The state Department of Health on Saturday instructed hospitals not affected by the strike to be prepared to accept patients from the affected medical centers. The letter makes it clear that hospitals where nurses are on strike are free to transfer patients, even against the patients’ will.