Dear NYSNA member,
2023 was the most successful year in our union’s history. We won the best contracts in NYSNA’s history and made precedent-setting wage and staffing gains that lifted up healthcare workers everywhere.
None of what we have accomplished last year would have been possible without you — the rank-and-file members of NYSNA. You did this.
Every NYSNA member should be proud, because after the devastating trauma many of us experienced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not only survived but thrived. Our victories have inspired hope even beyond New York state.
Together our movement of frontline registered nurses and healthcare professionals is having an impact on the resurgence of the labor movement; building worker power; improving health equity; and raising standards for our profession, our patients and our communities.
We must remember what is possible when we work together and when we are bold. Our unity is our strength. In 2024, we will bring that unity and momentum to our NYSNA siblings upstate, where we face many challenges. From hostile anti-union employers to economically struggling communities to healthcare consolidation that is creating healthcare deserts and driving disparities, we will continue to build power to fight back and win.
Our opposition will always outspend us, but what we have is the power of you — our members. It takes all of us to hold healthcare corporations and the government accountable and create the healthcare system that we all deserve.
We just spent a year taking on seemingly insurmountable challenges and making history, so we know that as “One Union United to Win,” NYSNA members are ready to build on our victories and tackle the next set of challenges that come our way.
We are honored to be in this fight together with you and look forward to another incredible year.
In solidarity,
Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN, NYSNA President Patricia Kane, RN, NYSNA Executive DirectorFrom the historic private sector strike in January at Mount Sinai and Montefiore to multiple contract victories in Long Island, the North Country and Western New York to the historic pay parity victory in New York City’s public health system, NYSNA nurses and healthcare workers set a new standard for safe staffing and healthcare worker wages and benefits, inspiring healthcare workers around the country to fight for their rights and their patients.
NYSNA nurses and healthcare professionals fought and won great new contracts. Whether striking to win precedent-setting standards or negotiating without the need to strike, NYSNA members turned out in force to show our healthcare employers what unity and solidarity look like. Nurses’ commitment to patient advocacy and bravery to stand up for what’s right even in the face of intimidation from hospital bosses made history for NYSNA this year! We have won the best contracts in our union’s history.
2023 started with a bang, with New York City private sector nurses being the first to lead NYSNA to victory. Sixteen thousand nurses at 12 hospitals were part of the largest contract campaign in our union’s history. These nurses strategized together for more than a year, and all bargained on a common deadline of Dec. 31, 2022, and a common platform to improve care in our communities.
This unprecedented campaign gave voice to every local bargaining unit, allowed for independence and left no one behind. Nurses mobilized throughout the campaign, including NYSNA members from the most profitable academic medical centers to the smallest safety-net hospitals in the outer boroughs:
• BronxCare Health System
• Brooklyn Hospital Center
• Flushing Hospital Medical Center
• Interfaith Medical Center
• Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center
• Maimonides Medical Center
• Montefiore Health System
• Mount Sinai Hospital
• Mount Sinai Morningside and West
• NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP)
• Richmond University Medical Center
• Wyckoff Heights Medical Center
Nurses faced an uphill battle. The employers who were trustees of the NYSNA Benefit Fund, the only nurse Taft-Hartley health plan in New York, were holding negotiations hostage. They were proposing to cut nurses’ health benefits and increase our costs by 30%, and all the facilities were holding out on real wage offers to see what would happen with the health plan. Once the campaign sealed our plan’s security for years to come, negotiations really started moving.
Through starting the contract campaign early, strategizing between the different executive committees throughout the campaign, coordinating the strike vote, and being serious about the contract expiration deadline, every contract but one was won within two weeks of expiration.
The NYC private sector nurses set a great precedent for delivering on-time contracts and protecting benefits for more and more nurses all over the state who belong to the NYSNA Benefit Fund.
These nurses showed that when we fight, we win:
• Nurses won the largest pay increases in NYSNA history and set a pattern of increases of 7%, 6% and 5% over three years of the contract for other NYSNA members and healthcare workers throughout the region.
• NYSNA members protected our benefits and added more members to NYSNA’s health and pension plan.
• We won the best enforceable safe staffing language in NYSNA history.
• We won better health and safety protections.
• We won community benefits, including saving essential healthcare services and nurse apprenticeship programs for local community members.
FE BRUARY 2022
AUG. 18
SEPTEMBER
SEPT. 12
First meetings to discuss a joint contract campaign. Bargaining surveys launch. Contract Action Teams (CATs) formed.
Contract campaign launches with an all-day strategy session.
We Love NY Nurses ad campaign launched on subways, buses and billboards throughout the city.
Bargaining kicks off. Nurses hold sticker days of action and call NYSNA Plan trustees to send a clear message: Don’t mess with our benefits!
SEPT. 26 Nurses demand in-person bargaining.
OCT. 24-28 Week of Action: Nurses at seven New York City hospitals rally for fair contracts.
NOV. 17
BronxCare nurses hold speak-out.
NOV. 30 Nurses testify at the New York City Council hearing on safe staffing and join Hospitals Committee Chair Mercedes Narcisse and Council Speaker Adrienne Adamson on the steps of City Hall for a press conference ahead of the hearing.
DEC. 13 Candlelight vigil at NYP to honor the nurses who worked on the frontlines of the pandemic.
DEC. 20 Montefiore nurses co-host community health forum.
DEC. 22 Nurses announce strike authorization vote, with nearly 99% yes vote.
DEC. 30 Nurses at eight hospitals deliver strike notices.
DEC. 31 NYP nurses reach the first tentative agreement, averting a strike.
JAN. 5-8 2023
Nurses at Maimonides, Flushing, and Mount Sinai Morningside and West all reach a tentative agreements
JAN. 9 Strikes at Mount Sinai and Montefiore begin.
JAN. 11 Nurses at Wyckoff reach a tentative agreement.
JAN. 12 Strikes at Mount Sinai and Montefiore end with new tentative agreements reached.
MARCH 10
NYP retirees fight back to enforce the new contract and win agreed-upon rates for retiree healthcare benefits.
MARCH 23 One Brooklyn Health Interfaith Medical Center and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center unanimously ratify new contracts, bringing New York City private sector contract campaign to an end.
put it all on the line and went on strike for three days, winning groundbreaking agreements and electrifying the labor movement, including nurses and workers all over the world. They held the line for respect and better patient care, and anyone who experienced their strike can still feel the energy.
Management told Mount Sinai nurses they would never win safe staffing ratios at their hospital. They were told they were abandoning their patients by going on strike. They bravely walked the picket line for better patient care for three days and won enforceable safe staffing ratios in their contract for the first time. They received community and political support from dozens of leaders, including Attorney General Letitia James, New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento, New York City Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez, the Borough presidents, and many City Council members.
Management told Montefiore nurses it was impossible to figure out safe staffing ratios for the Emergency Department (ED) and that talking about community benefits had no place in a union contract. At the end of their three-day strike, they secured staffing ratios in the ED for the first time, a commitment from the hospital to invest in upgrading and expanding the ED, and a new nurse apprenticeship program targeted to local students and community members.
NYC Health+Hospitals (H+H)/Mayorals nurses form the largest labor bargaining unit (LBU) in NYSNA, representing nurses at 11 New York City public hospitals as well as long-term care facilities, clinics, home care and city agencies that keep first responders and essential workers healthy. They smashed the wage pattern set by the larger municipal unions —something unprecedented they were told was impossible to do. They won the largest pay gains in our union’s history and possibly New York City municipal union history. They won pay parity with New York City private sector nurses — something that had not been achieved for 30 years. They mounted the largest campaign in their LBU’s history, and New York City public sector members showed up, showed out and showed the city that they deserve respect.
Throughout their campaign, the nurses emphasized that pay equity was a matter of health equity and racial justice for public sector patients and the mostly people of color who work in the H+H/Mayorals health system. Joined by elected officials and community allies, nurses rallied, spoke out and staged sit-in protests to end the costly crisis of understaffing and high turnover and win a fair contract. They exposed the outrageous nurse vacancy rate caused by low pay and the unacceptable cost of filling the gaps with expensive temp travel nurse contracts, which were estimated to cost the city’s health system $589.9 million in 2022.
Two years of pay parity wage increases totaling more than $21,500 to bring public sector salaries up to par with New York City private sector nurse salaries.
Salary increases of 3%, 3% and 3.25% in years 3, 4, and 5, respectively, of the contract that when combined with the pay parity award total an increase of at least 37% over the life of the contract for all full-time members.
Improved staffing ratios and new staffing ratios will be expanded beyond the 11 acute care hospitals into other registered nurse settings.
Improved staffing enforcement, including a new staffing subcommittee; an expanded pool of mediators to hear and resolve staffing disputes; and a fact-finding process if the parties fail to reach an agreement on mediation.
A new systemwide float pool to improve staffing throughout the hospitals and reduce nurse floating and use of expensive temp travel nurses.
OCT. 6 2022
JAN. 18 2023
FEB. 1
Public launch on steps of City Hall.
Martin Luther King Jr. Action: march on H+H headquarters with demand to bargain.
Deliver pay parity demand letter.
FEB. 9 Public Forum with Jumaane Williams.
FEB. 14 First bargaining session
MARCH 2
MARCH 21
MARCH 22
APRIL-JUNE
MAY 4
All-facility red day/candlelight vigil day of action on contract expiration.
City Council Hospitals budget hearing.
Budget lobby day: spotlight fair funding and public sector struggle.
Nurses testify at H+H annual meetings.
Petition delivery action.
MAY 10 Foley Square rally with Rev. Al Sharpton.
MAY 24 City Hall hearing and advertising launch.
JUNE 7 Bellevue speak-out and sit-in.
JUNE 14 Jacobi speak-out and sit-in.
JUNE 22
JULY 10
AUG. 2
Week of Action: nurses rally at H+H/Elmhurst, Henry J. Carter, Harlem, Kings, Lincoln, Queens, and South Brooklyn/Coney Island.
Expedited mediation begins
Members endorse pay parity award and contract.
Members at more than 40 healthcare facilities throughout New York won great new contracts. In addition to the New York City private and public sector contracts, NYSNA members won at:
• New Jewish Home
• Terrence Cardinal Cooke
• Ozanam Hall Nursing Home
• Union Community Health Center
• St. Vincent’s Hospital Westchester
• St. Joseph’s Medical Center
• BronxCare Special Care
• U.S. Family Health Plan
• Westchester Medical Center HealthAlliance Hudson Valley
• Samaritan Medical Center
• Adirondack Medical Center
• Arlington School District
• Putnam Hospital
• Royalton Hartland School District
• Livingston County
• Chenango County
• St. Lawrence Health System/Canton-Potsdam
• St. Lawrence Health System/Massena
• St. Lawrence Health System/Gouverneur
• NYP Brooklyn Methodist
• NYP Gracie Square
• Erie County Medical Center
• Northwell Health/Syosset
• Northwell Health/Plainview
• Northwell Health/South Shore University Hospital
• Catholic Health System/St. Joseph
• Catholic Health System/St. Charles
• Catholic Health System/St. Catherine of Siena
• PAGNY CRNAs
• Visiting Nurses Staten Island
• Bronxcare Midwives
• Montefiore New Rochelle
• Montefiore Mount Vernon
• Montefiore Nyack
• UVM-Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital
NYSNA members set a new high standard for nurse wages and benefits throughout New York, improving the lives of members and nonmembers alike. After our contract wins, healthcare workers at other facilities asked for similar increases, and hospitals hoping to compete for nurses were forced to increase their wages.
While great job benefits like employer-paid healthcare and pensions are on the decline in workplaces nationally, more NYSNA members actually won these benefits. In 2023, the NYSNA Benefit Fund welcomed thousands of new members, including healthcare professionals from St. John’s Riverside Hospital; Montefiore Nyack; and St. Lawrence Health Canton-Potsdam, Massena and Gouverneur Hospitals.
These were contract victories in every part of the state for all NYSNA members: public sector and private sector; upstate and downstate; for all healthcare professions, including registered nurses and advanced practice nurses; and in diverse healthcare settings, including hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics, schools, city agencies, county health departments and homes. NYSNA members accomplished so much through our unity and our solidarity and will continue building worker power in 2024 and beyond.
The St. Lawrence Health System, including Canton-Potsdam, Massena and Gouverneur Hospitals, all won great new contracts in 2023. Nurses at neighboring Adirondack Medical Center also won. All together, these facilities are making the North Country a NYSNA stronghold and creating good familysustaining jobs with benefits for the entire region. St. Lawrence members also won entry to the NYSNA Benefit Plan!
NYSNA members at Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) and Terrace View Long-Term Care fought for and won a new contract that improves safe staffing and workplace safety. They bravely spoke out about atrocious conditions for nurses and patients in the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP) and made their struggle a statewide and nationwide issue.
Northwell Health facilities, including Syosset, Plainview and South Shore University Hospitals, won great new contracts. On the heels of the New York City nurses strike, South Shore nurses proved they were ready to do whatever it takes for a fair contract, and their contract followed the pattern that private sector city nurses set of 7%, 6% and 5% wage increases over three years. Catholic Health System nurses at St. Joseph, St. Charles and St. Catherine of Siena also fought and won great contracts.
Nurses at Montefiore facilities in the Lower Hudson Valley from Mount Vernon, New Rochelle and Nyack Hospitals joined together for the first time on a common bargaining platform and contract campaign. Their solidarity and willingness to do whatever it takes brought home three contract victories in the final days of 2023, capping off a year of major gains in safe staffing, wages and benefits, including the new addition of Nyack members to the NYSNA pension plan.
2023 was a worker-power and a political power-building year for NYSNA. From the beginning of the year when enforcement of the clinical staffing committee bill began, through the budget and legislative session, and through local election season, NYSNA nurses made their voices heard — and made progress.
Since the clinical hospital staffing committee law passed and committees formed in 2021, NYSNA nurses have pushed for the proper representation on the committees and evidence-based standards for every unit. NYSNA filed dozens of complaints at the beginning of the law’s implementation and raised awareness of hospital administrators unilaterally watering down safe staffing standards.
Since enforcement of the law went into effect in January 2023, nurses have been just as vocal about holding our employers to the safe staffing standards now codified in each facility’s staffing plan. NYSNA nurses have diligently tracked staffing levels, spoken out about the plans not being posted publicly, met in committees and filed complaints with the New York State Department of Health (DOH).
This summer, we won an expansion of the hospital staffing committee law, so employers must include staffing ratios in all patient care units, including outpatient.
“Let’s look bravely into the future and organize, because it is through building a national movement of nurses — the backbone of our healthcare system — that we will save nursing and save healthcare.”
“Let’s look bravely into the future and organize, because it is through building a national movement of nurses — the backbone of our healthcare system — that we will save nursing and save healthcare.”
—Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN
- Nancy Hagans, RN
That was always how we interpreted the law, but the DOH sent a letter to hospital CEOs ordering them to expand safe staffing standards to all units.
This summer, we also pushed for the DOH to enact the universal critical care staffing ratio regulation for all hospitals that was part of the 2021 law. Now, critically ill patients will benefit from a 1:2 nurse-to-patient minimum staffing ratio. Instead of the longer process of discussing understaffing in committees before filing a complaint with the DOH, nurses can immediately report intensive care unit staffing ratio violations directly on the DOH website.
There is still much work to be done to push the DOH to fully enforce the staffing laws. Expect to hear more in 2024 about this fight!
NYSNA, allied with other unions and healthcare advocates, pushed for substantial increases in the state budget for healthcare. The final budget increased Medicaid reimbursements for all hospitals and nursing homes and added more money to support safety net hospitals’ day-to-day operations and capital needs. We will continue to push for additional fair funding to ensure hospitals can deliver safe staffing and maintain quality care in every community.
NYSNA member advocacy successfully defeated several harmful policy proposals, including the interstate nurse licensure compact, the creation of a new medication aides title that would be allowed to administer medications in nursing homes, and several other proposals that could have undermined nursing scope of practice and quality patient care. In 2024, we will remain prepared to fight any efforts to erode nursing scope of practice and deskill our profession.
We pushed for stronger protections against mandatory overtime and won. Even after the COVID-19 state of emergency was lifted, some employers were abusing mandatory overtime.
NYSNA advocated alongside the New York State AFLCIO’s Nurse Issues Committee to strengthen enforcement of the state’s mandatory overtime protection law, which bars hospitals and other medical facilities from forcing nurses to work overtime, except during limited emergency situations.
Beginning in June 2023, all instances of mandatory overtime must now be reported to New York State Department of Labor (DOL), even if an exception, such as a declaration of emergency, is applicable. The DOL can issue penalties to employers that abuse mandatory overtime.
Labor and healthcare policies and regulations impact our lives and patients’ lives every day. Shouldn’t frontline workers have a say? That’s why NYSNA members engage in the political process.
NYSNA teamed up with other labor unions around the state to get out the vote for local candidates who support workers’ rights and healthcare justice. We contributed to some important electoral races, and with 2024 set to be a major election year for statewide and national races, there has never been a better time to get involved in NYSNA’s Political Action Team. Sign up at www.nysna.org/PAT
NYSNA members led from the frontlines in 2023 by fighting for safe staffing and community benefits in our contracts, enforcing safe staffing standards and speaking out for health equity.
We had great contract enforcement and safe staffing enforcement victories. Mount Sinai nurses have led the way with arbitration victories, becoming the first in the nation to win financial penalties from employers who chronically understaff units. They didn’t just do it once — they won five arbitrations in 2023.
Through tracking staffing levels and providing expert testimony, Mount Sinai Hospital neonatal intensive care unit nurses, cardiac surgery and cardiovascular intensive care unit nurses, and med-surg and step-down nurses, along with Mount Sinai Morningside ED nurses and post-anesthesia care unit nurses won financial remedies for understaffed nurses. The arbitrators ordered employers to hire and retain more nurses, schedule more nurses, and provide meal and break relief, among other remedies.
In November, Montefiore Weiler telemetry nurses also tested their new staffing enforcement language and won their first staffing arbitration that delivered financial remedies to nurses. The financial remedies are a new contract enforcement tool to hold hospitals accountable, disincentivize the hospital from chronically understaffing units, and build pressure to recruit and retain enough nurses for safe patient care.
In February, NYSNA hosted a public health forum on health equity with NYC H+H/Mayorals NYSNA members, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, healthcare experts and community allies. The forum highlighted the crucial role our public hospitals have played in caring for all New Yorkers and improving health equity.
Panelists discussed how fair funding to better resource public hospitals, fair wages, and safe staffing — the very things public sector nurses were fighting for in their contract — would improve quality care and lead to greater equity for the underserved and underinsured patients in the public system. They noted that the nurses and patients of the public system, largely people of color, had experienced pay disparities and health disparities for too long. Forum participants — from nurse leaders to elected officials and community advocates to faith leaders — agreed that respecting nurses and patients was an inseparable part of the fight for healthcare justice.
The fight for health equity is also a fight for access to the healthcare services that communities need. In recent years, profit-driven hospitals have cut back or eliminated services that are less profitable, including mental health and maternal-child health services. The trend of closing these services only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, but nurses are fighting back.
When NYP Brooklyn Methodist nurses were bargaining their contract last spring, they made sure health equity was at the forefront of their fight. They reminded the public that one of the two inpatient mental health units that were shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic
was still closed. The lack of adequate mental healthcare was driving unsafe staffing, unsafe conditions and long wait times in the ED. After winning their contract, the nurses continue to push to reopen the services their community needs.
NYSNA members fought to preserve maternal child health services on multiple fronts in 2023. After preventing the closure of the Nurse-Family partnership at Montefiore Bronx, a largely grant-funded program that served hundreds of families in the Bronx each year, Montefiore nurses learned the vital program was on the chopping block once again.
Nurses mobilized to save the program for a community with some of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the state and where child poverty rates are the highest in the nation. They launched a petition, then marched on Montefiore CEO Dr. Philip O. Ozuah to deliver hundreds of signatures from healthcare workers and community members demanding continued funding for the program. The next day, Montefiore announced its continued investment in the Nurse-Family Partnership program, a great victory for health equity and maternal and child health in the Bronx.
The end of 2023 brought two more maternal health fights to NYSNA members at NYP Allen and St. Catherine of Siena. In December, NYP Allen midwives got notice that the hospital planned to discontinue midwifery services, which would impact quality care and health equity for the mostly Black and brown birthing people in that community. At the end of December, St. Catherine nurses got notice that the maternal-child health unit would close, impacting nurses and families in Smithtown, Long Island and the surrounding communities. NYSNA members are fighting to keep these essential healthcare services open for care in 2024.
So many of the problems in our profit-driven healthcare system could be solved by removing the profit motive. By removing insurance and other healthcare system bureaucracy that only adds cost — not value — for patients, the U.S. could join most other wealthy countries in the world by having a universal healthcare system that increases access to care; lowers costs; and improves working conditions, health equity and health outcomes for everyone.
That’s why NYSNA supports universal, single-payer healthcare as a long-term solution to the staffing and healthcare crisis in this country. In 2023, NYSNA members formed a new single-payer healthcare committee, which launched a newsletter this year and is working hard to educate, organize and engage more members in this advocacy work.
In addition, NYSNA designed a continuing education program to educate our members about single-payer healthcare; we attended the Labor for Single Payer convening in Baltimore in spring 2023; and we lobbied our state and federal legislators for guaranteed healthcare for all.
NYSNA members are key partners in coalition efforts to win healthcare for all. We work closely with the Campaign for New York Health, which hired a new executive director to reinvigorate the campaign to win the New York Health Act, New York’s single-payer legislation. As part of National Nurses United, we have advocated for Medicare-for-All legislation on the federal level by participating in lobby days, town halls and press conferences. We have spoken out about our experiences as patients and frontline healthcare professionals working in the current system that puts profits before patients. And we will continue to speak out and advocate for a healthcare system that puts human need above corporate greed.
During a year of historic labor mobilizations that saw writers, actors, autoworkers and healthcare workers go on strike to demand respect, NYSNA kicked off the year with historic victories that have helped inspire resurgence in the U.S. labor movement. NYSNA members didn’t just win major gains for our patients and profession this year. We are a part of fueling worker power.
We organized 1,500 new NYSNA nurses in 2023. We welcomed Mount Sinai South Nassau nurses and Margaretville Hospital nurses. We organized more members at the hospitals where we represent RNs, including nurse practitioners at Catholic Health St. Joseph Hospital, nurse reviewers at Maimonides Medical Center, nurse educators at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, and nurse educators at Northwell/South Shore University Hospital. With the merger of St. Elizabeth’s and Faxton St. Luke’s in Utica, we also gained new members who voted for NYSNA to represent them at the new Wynn Hospital in downtown Utica.
Every nurse deserves a voice on the job, and every nurse deserves a strong union like NYSNA.
NYSNA grew our strength in numbers by affiliating with National Nurses United (NNU), the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association for registered nurses. NYSNA went from being a power of 42,000 to a power of nearly 225,000 nurses across the country! We have grown our national voice on all the issues that matter to nurses and patients. And we will continue to grow.
From walking the “practice” picket line with UPS Teamsters to walking the picket line with striking UAW and SAG-AFTRA workers to supporting the Robert Wood Johnson University United Steelworkers Local 4-200 nurses on strike, NYSNA has been there in solidarity with our union siblings all year. This year, union members fought back against out-of-control CEO pay, dangerous working conditions, new technologies that threaten their livelihoods and disrespect.
Our union siblings have shown up time and again for NYSNA members, too. They joined us at speak-outs, rallies, and picket lines. Laborers and Teamsters helped us get supplies to the NYC strike line.
When union members pushed back against corporate attacks, they won more than great contracts — they won the support and respect of working people everywhere. According to Gallup polls, approval of unions in the U.S. is at record-high rates, and Americans overwhelmingly side with union workers in labor disputes.
That’s because building worker power and union power builds healthy, prosperous and resilient communities. Labor has always led the fight for social, racial and economic justice, and its wins have improved lives and communities beyond its members. Solidarity among union workers from all different sectors strengthens all of us for the fights ahead.
As we look toward 2024, we know there will be many contract and policy fights ahead and opportunities to continue building on our success. We have more work to do together to advocate and win for our patients and profession.
We will use our collective power to meet the moment together, strengthening our solidarity and resolve, to build a healthcare system and a society that NYSNA members, our patients and our communities all deserve.
NYSNA nurses made their voices heard and helped shape the public debate about nursing, unions and healthcare in 2023. We made headlines and reached billions of people in the process. We kept the issues of safe staffing, quality patient care, and dignity and respect for our profession front and center throughout the year. Here are just a few highlights.
28 billion
The most-read article about the New York City nurses strike was from the Associated Press. It ran in several media outlets throughout the country, including the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Tribune, NBC and NPR, and reached 212 million people.
Nurses Are Burned Out and Fed Up, for Good Reason
7,000 ‘exhausted and burnt out’ NYC nurses walk out
CNN Newsroom with Pamela Brown, Michelle Gonzalez
Commentary: Albany Med Must Do More to Protect Staff and Patients From Violence
Nancy Hagans Named One of 2023’s Top Winners by City & State
NYSNA nurses voted at the 2022 Convention to affiliate with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO (NNU), the largest and fastest-growing union for registered nurses in the nation. As part of NNU, NYSNA joined with other NNU affiliates — including California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), Minnesota Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association and District of Columbia Nurses Association — to build nurse power from coast to coast. Below are a few highlights of the affiliation over the last year.
Healthcare employers are increasingly merging, consolidating and expanding across state lines. NYSNA nurses understand that the problems in healthcare are never just local, and they have expanded NYSNA’s voice and power nationally too. From participating in federal lobby days to weighing in on national health and safety regulations to testifying at congressional hearings, NYSNA nurses are leaving their mark on key issues that impact nurses everywhere.
In March, NYSNA nurses spoke out for federal safe staffing ratios at a congressional briefing and again in June when Sen. Sherrod Brown (OH) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL) reintroduced
the Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act, federal legislation that would establish minimum registered nurse-topatient ratios for every hospital unit.
In October, NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, RN, BSN, CCRN, became the first NYSNA president to testify at a congressional hearing when she testified at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Field Hearing, which Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) convened, about the need for federal safe staffing ratios. With hundreds of nurses, healthcare workers and patient advocates packing the auditorium at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, it turned out to be the best-attended hearing the HELP Committee had ever called. Hagans testified alongside leaders from other nurse unions, including Health Professionals & Allied Employees (HPAE) and United Steelworkers Local 420, whose members at the Robert Wood Johnson Memorial Hospital had been on strike for months.
In May, dozens of NYSNA members participated in a virtual lobby week, meeting with New York Congress members to advocate for safe staffing, protection from workplace violence,
the right to organize unions, fairness for U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs nurses and Medicare for All. NYSNA nurses also testified at a town hall in support of Medicare for All legislation with Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA) at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C.
Nurses were likewise in attendance at press conferences when Sanders, Jayapal and Rep. Debbie Dingell (MI) introduced Medicare for All legislation in Congress. That same day, NNU nurses spoke out in support of the FAMILY Act, which Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT) sponsored, which would guarantee paid family and medical leave to all workers.
In addition to making our voices heard on federal legislation to improve working conditions and patient care conditions, NYSNA joined NNU in national efforts to stop the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from rolling back infection control guidelines. NYSNA signed onto an organizational letter and circulated a petition to increase transparency in rulemaking at the CDC and give the people who work on the frontlines a strong voice in decision-making.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly in the rear-view mirror, nurses cannot allow the same lax health and safety protocols and failures to happen again. We will continue to advocate for the strongest infection control and health and safety protections possible to keep frontline workers and patients safe and to mitigate the impact of future pandemics and healthcare emergencies.
Through NNU, NYSNA nurses are connected to more resources and opportunities for organizing, education and empowerment than ever before. NNU has been invaluable in sharing resources and strategies to defend our practice against old threats like the Nursing Licensure Compact as well as emerging threats like artificial intelligence. They helped get more boots on the ground to organize new NYSNA members at Mount Sinai South Nassau. NNU educators have presented new and exciting programs at the NYSNA Convention, and NYSNA members have had the opportunity to attend workshops and conventions from NNU and CAN/NNOC.
In October, over a dozen NYSNA members attended the CNA/NNOC Conven-
tion in San Francisco and helped our union siblings celebrate a legacy of 120 years! NYSNA nurse leaders joined this important gathering to share strategies and knowledge, listen to each other’s experiences, make new connections, recharge and grow in solidarity with nurse leaders across the country.
NYSNA is New York’s oldest and largest state union and professional association for nurses, but it was not until we affiliated with NNU that we officially entered into the broader labor movement. For the first time, NYSNA has a seat on the Executive Board of the New York State AFL-CIO and the New York City Central Labor Council. Through NNU, we also have a seat at the table with all the international unions that are charting the course of the national and international labor movement.
This summer, Hagans made history once more by becoming the first NYSNA president to lead the New York City Labor Day Parade. As grand marshal, Hagans marched with New York’s most prominent labor and political leaders and later joined an exuberant contingent of nurses from NYSNA and NNU along the parade route. Hagans’ selection was an incredible recognition of NYSNA’s successes and inspiration to the labor movement in 2023.
NNU and NYSNA share a vision of social justice unionism. We see our struggles as nurses, healthcare professionals and workers interconnected with our patients’ and communities’ struggles. Advocating for our patients requires addressing social determinants of health and the injustices that drive inequities in healthcare and in our broader society. NYSNA nurses were honored in 2023 to join with NNU in commemorating our nation’s legacy of civil rights struggle and speaking out for peace and justice.
In March, we marched along with NNU nurses across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the 58th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” to remember the ongoing struggle for civil rights. In August, NYSNA nurses joined with NNU and other labor and civil rights activists from around the country for the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.
In November, the NYSNA Board of Directors endorsed the CAN/NNOC statement on the crisis in the Middle East, calling for an immediate ceasefire, delivery of humanitarian aid, release of all hostages, and an end to this violence and trauma of war.
In the last year, NYSNA went from being a power of 42,000 to a power of nearly 225,000 nurses across the country! Our affiliation is building a strong movement for nurses, for quality healthcare, and for a more caring and compassionate world — and this is only the beginning.
The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) is the largest nurses’ union and professional association for registered nurses in New York State, representing more than 42,000 members for collective bargaining, adv ocating for professional nursing standards of practice, and promoting the health and welfare of our members, our profession, and the people of New York. As a powerful union and organization made up of and led by nurses and healthcare professionals, we understand the vital role that we play in providing healthcare to all who need it, protecting the public health, and promoting the well-being of nurses in our workplaces, in our communities and in the political sphere. As a powerful and growing organization, NYSNA is defined by our commitment to:
1. Advocating for and protecting the interests of all nurses and our profession as a whole.
2. Leading the fight for healthcare equity, social, racial and economic justice, and the well-being of the people of the communities in which we live and work.
3. Promoting and achieving the highest possible level of professional nursing practice, quality of patient care, and health outcomes for our patients.
4. Tenaciously fighting to improve wages, retirement security, health benefits, safe staffing, and safe working conditions through collective bargaining and aggressive enforcement of the rights of members in their workplaces.
5. Leading the fight to address environmental and social determinants of health to ensure the well-being of future generations.
6. Building up and empowering nurses to assume our leadership role as advocates in the profession, the healthcare system, the political process, and our local communities.
7. Fostering emotional well-being and workplace wellness to fully support our profession and patients.
8. Providing mentorship, support and collaboration needed to develop and continue the traditions of nursing practice, advance the nursing profession to meet the needs of our communities, and develop and nurture the next generation of nurse leaders and advocates.
