City nurses insist H+H has the money to close wage gap

To stop the exodus of nurses from the city’s public hospitals, the New York State Nurses Association is insisting on a contract that significantly closes the wage gap between nurses at NYC Health + Hospitals and their private-sector counterparts.

The union believes that H+H has enough money to accomplish this goal: last year, H+H spent $589.9 million on about 2,000 temporary nurses last year to help fulfill their staffing needs, Politico reported. That’s more than the $549 million H+H CEO and President Dr. Mitchell Katz said that the public hospitals spent during his testimony to the City Council in May. 

“Every day that goes by, the city is losing money from keeping our pay so low, and every day our patients are suffering the consequences,” said Musu King, a registered nurse and the union’s bargaining unit president at Lincoln Hospital.

H+H did not return a request for comment.

King noted that the amount H+H has spent on temporary nurses “is more than three times the cost of what it would cost to bring nurses’ pay to parity with the private sector.” NYSNA called the spending on travel nurses "outrageous," adding that the average hourly pay for travel nurses was $163.50, three-and-a-half times staff nurses’ salary.

A less expensive solution?

The union’s contract expired March 2. NYSNA estimates that H+H is spending $1.5 million on travel nurses every day it doesn’t settle a contract. The union contends that H+H spent more than $401 million on travel nurses during the first few months of Fiscal Year 2023 alone.

City Comptroller Brad Lander raised concerns about the high level of spending on temporary nurses. In a letter sent earlier this month to H+H, he called on the public hospital system to provide his office with a breakdown of the cost for travel nurses since FY 2019, as well as the projected cost for the nurses between Fiscal Years 2023 and 2027.

The wage disparity between H+H nurses and private-sector nurses has been a longstanding issue and is expected to continue being a point of contention. H+H nurses will earn $19,500 a year less than nurses working in private-sector hospitals once their raises take effect.

The nurses believed that raising salaries would help resolve retention issues at the hospitals. “We need to earn enough so that nurses won’t leave in six months or a year,” King said at a Thursday rally outside of Lincoln Hospital.

The nurses held three simultaneous rallies — at Lincoln, at Kings County Hospital Center and at Elmhurst Hospital — to demand that the city’s public hospital system reach a labor agreement that provides parity. 

Wanda Gonzalez, a registered nurse at Lincoln, argued that the public hospitals could least afford to be understaffed because they disproportionately served communities with negative health outcomes, including the South Bronx, where Lincoln Hospital is located.

“We see the increase of homelessness, the mental health crisis and the opioid epidemic ever-growing here in the South Bronx. We still hold the highest number of unintentional deaths from overdose here in this community,” she said.

Hunter Fulghum, an emergency medicine resident at Lincoln and delegate for the Committee of Interns and Residents, came out to support the nurses’ fight.

“It is shameful that the mayor isn’t treating this with the urgency it deserves,” he said during the rally. “I came to Lincoln for my residency because I wanted to use my skills as a doctor to serve an underserved community. Everyone here today is here because we want to care for this community, and it is an honor, but that honor alone doesn’t pay anyone’s bills.”

Over the next week, NYSNA has planned a few other rallies for a fair contract, including one at Queens Hospital Center Tuesday and another at Harlem Hospital Wednesday.

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson said that the elected officials were “all united” in the goal of ensuring essential workers get the pay they deserve. 

“We want to make sure that this administration talks the talk and walks the walk,” she said.

clewis@thechiefleader.com