Residents set strike dates for higher wages at two Queens hospitals
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Jamaica Hospital, one of two Queens hospitals where interns and residents plan to strike starting on May 15. Wikimedia Commons photo by Tdorante10
By Ryan Schwach
Interns and residents at two of Queens’ hospitals have announced strike dates for two weeks from now after the health network that runs the facilities did not meet their union’s demands for higher wages at recent negotiations.
Almost 300 interns and residents at both Flushing and Jamaica Hospitals in Queens intend to strike from 7 a.m. on May 15 to the same time on May 18, according to Jamaica Hospital union delegate Dr. Neha Ravi. It would be the first time New York City physicians strike in 33-years.
Ravi says that there are plans for two more bargaining sessions before May 15, which will be the last attempts for a strike to be averted.
The strike announcement comes just days after 93 percent of the union’s voting membership voted “yes” in a strike authorization vote last week after negotiations with MediSys Health Network soured over what union officials say included low wages and 80-hour weeks with extra responsibilities.
“We did not get any response to our patient care concerns during [Monday’s] bargaining sessions,” Ravi told the Eagle.
“They have been continuously rejecting our very urgent proposals,” added Ravi, who is a first year resident at Jamaica Hospital. “The proposals that we're making for patient care, they affect patient care every day. So when we say they’re urgent, they are urgent.”
In a statement to the Eagle, Xavia Malcolm, a spokesperson for MediSys, said, “Negotiations are ongoing.”
The doctors, unionized under the Committee for Interns and Residents, say they have been in and out of the negotiating room with MediSys since Nov. 1, 2022, with little results.
“It has been really difficult negotiating back and forth with MediSys,” said Ravi. “We have filed a number of unfair labor practices because of canceling bargaining sessions at the last second without giving any notice, or one time without notifying us at all.”
“I really didn’t think it was going to come to any serious discussion about a strike,” she added. “It feels that they're forcing us into this position where if we want anything to move, whether that's going to be a living wage for residents, regulations focused on keeping patients safe, ensuring we have adequate time to devote to our patients, other core demands, they are pushing back on every single front.”
Flushing and Jamaica resident doctors say that their wages, which in some cases are as low as $15 to $17 an hour, are not enough to live in the city where they work, and their 80-hour work week with added responsibilities limit their ability to serve patients.
“It's very expensive to live in New York City,” said Dr. Uchenna Chinawke, a resident of internal medicine at Flushing Hospital who lives in Queens. “My wonderful colleagues do a lot of good work for the community catering to the health of our patients, not just from Queens, but frankly from all over the world. The last thing they need is to be concerned about or worried about how they're going to take care of their families and put food on the table while they're doing this.”
In many cases, doctors are required to see new patients every 15 to 20 minutes and carry out added responsibilities.
“When you're slotted into 10, 15, 20 minute intervals to take care of patients, and you have to reset your empathy every single time and you've maybe you've seen like 30 patients by the end of the day or if you're working in the hospital, you are constantly having to turn it on and off,” said Ravi.
Other doctors, like Dr. Muhammad Abbas, a resident at Jamaica, says the long hours and patient workload limits the quality of care and the effectiveness of the doctor.
“It's been a toll on all our doctors, not just physically, but mentally obviously, and financially, as well,” he said. “I believe that our basic requirement is that we want to become better doctors. We want to become the best doctors that we can be, and that will only happen if the situation or if the place that we work in is fair.”
“We feel that if we are fatigued, that wouldn't be fair to the patients,” Abbas added. “It's getting worse and worse, especially in one of the largest cities in the world, and one of the most expensive cities in the world. We feel that we've been kind of left behind.”
Part of the negotiations include a potential cap on the number of patients worked into their contracts, so they are not bouncing from bedside to bedside, like they say they are now.
The residents say that pandemic-era issues with understaffing and lack of quality support from administrators have bled through into the post-pandemic world.
“It's just an ongoing thing, even though we're out of the pandemic,” said Abbas. “All the medical staff have been working hand-in-hand to provide appropriate medical care and quality care for all our people in the community. Now we feel that we have been taken advantage of.”
A strike in the medical profession is a difficult one, as the needs of patients have the potential to be left by the wayside, something the potential strikers said they are aware of.
“Nobody wants to strike – being a medical professional, if I spend all my life up to now serving my patients, caring for my patients, why would I just suddenly want to not care about them?” said Abbas. “That's not the case, we definitely care for them. I mean, I just spent yesterday not eating, not drinking anything, just making sure my patients do well.”
Since the banging of pots and pans during the pandemic, the residents say support of medical professionals has whittled away, back to the way it was before COVID.
“I come from a family of doctors, a very long line of doctors,” said Ravi. “I think that there's been a shift somewhere along the way in how the public views doctors and how doctors view themselves.”
The potential strike comes less than four months after over 7,000 nurses at two New York City hospitals, Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center, held a strike for three days, which ultimately resulted in a contract agreement.
That overnight agreement was called a “historic victory” by the New York State Nurses Association and applauded by Governor Kathy Hochul.
“The issues are very similar,” said Ravi.
Queens Councilmember Lynn Schulman, who chairs the Health Committee, has thrown her support behind the interns and residents.
“Decades of hospital closures has left Queens with the worst hospital capacity in the city and now CIR doctors are facing heavy patient loads and are sacrificing their education and well-being to care for our communities,” said Schulman, in a statement. “I am proud to stand with the dedicated doctors of CIR as they call on MediSys to bargain in good faith and agree to a fair contract that includes a living wage and limits to their heavy work loads and time spent away from patient care. This inequity in the treatment of CIR doctors is detrimental to the lives of our borough’s patients.”
