Striking New York Nurses Brave Subzero Cold

Fifteen thousand New York nurses are more than three weeks into their strike for a fairer contract. Yesterday members of the New York State Nurses Association braved below-freezing temperatures to march across the Brooklyn Bridge and deliver a message to City Hall.

Hundreds of nurses joined together in Cadman Plaza Park, clad in cherry-red NYSNA beanies and holding aloft signs that read “Safe Staffing Saves Lives,” “Quality Healthcare for All,” and “Hospital Execs Literally Make Us Sick."

As their procession stretched out across the bridge, chanting nurses were treated to applause from passersby and blaring honks from supportive onlookers below. The march concluded with a rally in Foley Square, where nurses spoke about short staffing, health benefits, and wages.

“If you’re supposed to have four patients, you should have four patients—not six, not seven, not eight,” said Sophie Damas, a nurse at Mount Sinai Medical Center. “When you have so many patients and not enough nurses, you just can’t give them the care they need.”

To Damas, part of the problem is that some elected officials are actively undermining the strike. “We need Governor [Kathy] Hochul to stop the state of emergency, because she’s allowing nurses from out of state to practice in New York,” she said, making it easier for the hospitals to get scabs.

D.I.Y. MARCH ON GOVERNOR

The Brooklyn Bridge march was the second stop on a tour of iconic New York City landmarks for striking nurses this week. Earlier the same day, hundreds of nurses had met at the clock in Grand Central Station, then swarmed through the streets of Midtown toward the governor’s office on 3rd Avenue.

Near 33rd Street, the march was rerouted in the opposite direction, reportedly because Hochul was not at her office, but another office 20 blocks north.

The march had been planned by a cross-unit contract action team, and had a more do-it-yourself vibe than many strike actions, so no one seemed bothered by the change in plans. People mostly held homemade signs or signs, noisy clackers, and horns repurposed from their picket lines.

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Hochul’s repeated extension of the emergency order that allows out-of-state scab nurses feels like a betrayal of health care workers and patients.

“We’d like her to stop this executive stay for all the travel nurses so that management can come to the table and do fair bargaining!” said an oncology nurse from Mount Sinai holding a “Hochul’s leadership failure is the emergency” sign.

“We’d like Governor Hochul to be a governor for all, not just for management,” the nurse said. “We feel like she’s biased. She’s siding with management by giving them the emergency orders for them to hire nurses from anywhere.”

At the final stop in front of a Midtown office building, nurses gathered in a courtyard to hear some short speeches from a bullhorn and chant “Kathy Hochul, shame on you,” and “One day longer, one day stronger!”

Some nurses expressed hope that local leaders can lend them a hand. “[Mayor Zohran] Mamdani and City Hall have been incredibly supportive, but we need more pressure right now,” said Natasha Marks, a clinical nurse specializing in palliative care at Mount Sinai, at the City Hall rally.

Marks, a strike captain, says nurses across the city are exasperated. “We love our patients,” she said. “We want a hospital that functions in a safe and effective manner. What the hospital is proposing is not that, so we’re filled with anger.”

But for Marks, the march also showcased tremendous camaraderie. “That’s how we’re able to get all these people out here,” she said. “Because they all have the same drive—a just and fair contract for both ourselves and our community.”