Nurses at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn received an immediate raise on Saturday after their union and hospital administrators reached a last-minute contract agreement and narrowly avoided a strike.
The Federation of Nurses/UFT ratified the two-year contract late on Feb. 27, about 24 hours before the old agreement was set to expire. On Feb. 18, nurses — who said they were underpaid and their units understaffed — warned that they would strike starting March 1 if an agreement was not reached in time.
“Our nurses are the backbone of NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn,” said UFT president Michael Mulgrew, in a statement. “The nurses forced the hospital to start paying the competitive salaries they deserve, and they forced management to drop the excuses and acknowledge that it is their responsibility to correctly staff the hospital.”
According to UFT, the roughly 1,000 unionized nurses at the hospital were granted a 9.25% raise on March 1, with an additional 6% raise set to take effect next March. By the end of the contract, staff nurses will have a base annual pay of $125,282, and nurses who stay on the same unit and shift for at least 18 months will be eligible for a one-time retention bonus of at least $3,750.
The agreement also maintained the nurses’ premium-free health insurance and ensured an “employer-paid” pension.
During contract negotiations, NYU Langone-Brooklyn nurses said they were underpaid compared to nurses at other hospitals in the area. Yusif Rahman, an RN in the hospital’s surgical intensive care unit, told Brooklyn Paper last month that he struggled to pay basic living expenses on his salary.
“We had a focus — to increase our base salary to equal or surpass what was offered by the surrounding hospitals,” said nurse and union chapter leader Moncef Righi, in a statement. “We were determined to make this happen, for fairness and to be in a better position to recruit and retain nurses.”
The contract also required NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn to post job listings for 100 full-time nurses by March 1 to “alleviate the chronic understaffing” at the hospital.
NYU Langone-Brooklyn has been subject to thousands of short-staffing complaints in the last few years, and has reportedly repeatedly violated nurse-patient ratios required by both state law and the union contract.
In addition to hiring new nurses, the hospital will pay a combined $1 million to nurses who were affected by understaffed shifts, according to UFT.
“The contract gives our nurses the respect they deserve by raising salaries and requiring NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn to hire the nurses they need to safely staff their hospital,” said Anne Goldman, head of the Federation of Nurses/ UFT, in a statement. “This opens the door to improving staffing, recruitment and retention and provides the economic equity our nurses have long deserved.”
James Iorio, director of media relations at NYU Langone, said the contract “will support our nurses as they continue to drive exceptional patient care and the best outcomes for all of our patients.”
