New York City Nurses Go on Strike in Record Numbers

Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here.

Around 15,000 nurses with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) went on strike in New York City on January 12, the largest for the industry in the city’s history. The strike targets ten locations across three of NYC’s main healthcare monopolies: Montefiore Bronx, NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP), and Mount Sinai. Workers are demanding better healthcare, staffing, pay, and security—including from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We’re providing medical care all our lives and can’t even get any when we retire,” a nurse on the picket line told The Worker.

“They’re putting profits over patients,” another nurse said. “Healthcare seems to be more of an industry that the higher-ups look for profit rather than actual patient care.”

Pickets across the city were buzzing with energy and optimism as workers gave speeches and chanted for their demands. Class solidarity was notable, with workers from various trades and industries honking their horns as they drove by throughout the day.

“If they cut our health insurance that means they can cut anybody’s health insurance,” a nurse told The Worker, citing that attacks on one section of the working class will “trickle down” and effect the rest of the workers.

A few days before the strike was set to begin, New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a State Disaster Emergency for one month that allows healthcare workers across the US and Canada without the normally-required qualifications to scab and staff the striking hospitals.

“It’s ironic that they are willing to spend so many millions on hiring travel nurses that are not familiar with our city, our hospital population, our hospital to begin with—and that is endangering the patients here,” said one nurse.

Governor Hochul has also refused to sign into law bills that would require a minimum amount of staffing.

“We’re always short staffed, the ratio can be 1 nurse to 30 patients at times. Some of us are bleeding through our clothes on our periods because we go 10 hours without going to the bathroom,” an Emergency Room nurse said.

Nurses condemned the monopoly press’s slander that nurses are “greedy” for wanting to improve their conditions and that of their patients.

“They understaff us to save money,” a nurse told The Worker, “but it becomes really dangerous for the patients and it becomes dangerous for us as the workers.”

Classified as nonprofits to avoid paying taxes, the healthcare monopolies that workers are up against bring in billions of dollars annually and have among the highest executive pay in their industry.

According to NYSNA, the healthcare monopolies disinvest in services for poor patients while increasing investments in more profitable sectors, such as real estate and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“They’re spending all this money on AI but can’t even get metal detectors,” a nurse said. “We don’t want to go to work feeling unsafe.”

This process of disinvestment takes place in collusion with the federal government’s cuts to healthcare and other social services and its broader attacks on the people.

One nurse and union official spoke with The Worker about the threat of ICE raids: “I personally saw ICE inside the hospital” at Mt. Sinai, stating the union formed a committee demanding the hospital “put guardrails around ICE in the hospital.”

About 7,000 nurses went on strike in NYC in 2023 over similar issues around staffing, pay, and benefits. Workers won their demands within three days.

Photo: Nurses on the picket line outside Mt. Sinai hospital in Manhattan on January 12, 2026. Credit: The Worker

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