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NYC nurses end strike at Mt. Sinai, Montefiore; reject deal at NewYork-Presbyterian
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Feb 11, 2026
Modified Feb 11, 2026
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Caroline Lewis/Gothamist
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Feb 11, 2026
Modified Feb 11, 2026
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Nurses at Mount Sinai and Montefiore voted on Wednesday to ratify new three-year contracts, ending their monthlong strike, while nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian rejected a deal, according to the New York State Nurses Association.
The ratified deals will return more than 10,000 New York City nurses to hospitals. Their walkout began on Jan. 12, in what has been the largest and longest nurses strike in city history, according to NYSNA. All told, nearly 15,000 nurses participated in the strike.
Nurses at Mount Sinai and Montefiore will return to work by Saturday, NYSNA said.
But more than 4,000 nurses at hospitals run by NewYork-Presbyterian remain on strike. Voting at all three hospital systems concluded Wednesday afternoon.
“Our contracts ensure that our hospitals are safer places – through increased staffing, workplace violence protections and more,” Nancy Hagans, the president of NYSNA, said in a statement. “This hard-earned victory shows hospitals that they can’t cut corners on patient care.”
She added, “Now it’s time for NewYork-Presbyterian to do the right thing, agree to a fair contract and bring all our nurses back to work.”
The vote at NewYork-Presbyterian was fraught.
Union leadership pushed forward a vote on the NewYork-Presbyterian contract Tuesday, even though the nurse bargaining committee at the hospital had rejected the deal that was on the table.
Dozens of nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and Montefiore protested the move in a demonstration in front of NYSNA headquarters in Manhattan on Wednesday, chanting “We are the nurses! Listen to your nurses!”
Angela Karafazli, a spokesperson for NewYork-Presbyterian, said the outcome was disappointing and that next steps were being determined.
At Mount Sinai Hospital, Morningside and West, nurses overwhelmingly voted to approve the contracts, according to hospital leadership.
“The past several weeks have been challenging, emotional, frustrating, and exhausting in different ways for all of us,” Brendan Carr, the CEO of Mount Sinai Health System, said in a message to employees. “I want to remind us all that health care is built on compassion, and that compassion must extend not only to our patients, but also to one another.”
Montefiore did not immediately comment on the vote.
The deals that ultimately ended the strike at Mount Sinai and Montefiore include salary increases of about 12% over three years, along with commitments from hospitals to maintain health benefits, increase staffing, add new safety measures to protect against workplace violence and create new safeguards around the use of artificial intelligence — though the contracts vary on the finer points.
Montefiore’s agreement also includes measures aimed at eliminating so-called “hallway beds” and reducing emergency room overcrowding, which nurse Hilda Haynes Lewis said helped sell her on the deal.
“Those are the two main things that we were out there chanting about and we got them,” she said.
Working through mediators, nurses on the bargaining committees at Montefiore and Mount Sinai first reached tentative agreements on their contracts early Monday morning and began voting on whether to approve the deals that afternoon.
According to NYSNA, 86% of nurses at Montefiore voted in favor of ratifying their contract, as did 96% of nurses at Mount Sinai West and Morningside and 87% of nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital, which negotiates as a separate entity.
NYSNA did not provide a tally on the vote at NewYork-Presbyterian, but Beth Loudin, the bargaining unit president at the hospital, said there were 3,099 votes against the deal and 867 in favor of it.
Loudin said it was “deeply unsettling” that NYSNA leadership went around the bargaining committee to hold a vote on the deal.
She said the bargaining committee wasn’t ready to accept the deal that was on the table because it only included a commitment from the hospital to hire 60 new full-time employees — far fewer than the 120 the union had most recently proposed — and did not include job protections that nurses said were needed after the hospital laid off 2% of its workforce last year.
Cagatay Celik, a nurse educator at NewYork-Presbyterian, said Wednesday he felt “betrayed” by union leadership.
“ I do want to go back,” Celik said. “I miss my patients. I miss my job. And we are all out of money.”
But he said expediting his return to work wasn’t worth taking a deal he didn’t support.
Tagged
2026 NYC Nurses Strike
new york city
Caroline Lewis
Caroline Lewis is on the health care beat for WNYC and Gothamist. She has covered COVID, a nurses' strike, the overdose crisis and New York’s marijuana legalization effort, and spent a year investigating patients' medical bills. She always wants to hear about how everyday New Yorkers experience the health system. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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