Elmhurst midwives call on Mt. Sinai to step up and pay up
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Midwives rallied outside Elmhurst Hospital to call for improved working conditions. Eagle photo by Rachel Vick
By Rachel Vick
Midwives, advocates and elected officials came together Wednesday morning to stand in solidarity with Elmhurst midwives who say that they are overworked and underpaid.
The picketers called on Mt. Sinai CEO Ken Davis and Elmhurst Hospital officials to improve working conditions and negotiate a fair contract after a year of the midwives working non-stop in the epicenter of the pandemic.
“I've worked with the hardest group of midwives you can ever meet — I’d like to keep them” said Chief Midwife Margaret Re during testimony where a year of exhaustion and frustration bubbled barely below the surface.
“It is too difficult to retain and keep midwives when we are expected to work 30 to 50 hours of overtime each week without extra pay,” she added. “It has been absurd, we have tried the hardest we can.”
Re said that during the pandemic she returned back to work two weeks after contracting COVID-19, but that her staff continued without taking any days off. There were thousands of babies delivered in the hospital as the pandemic ravaged Queens and the East Elmhurst community.
“60 percent of our women tested positive and we still came in,” she added. “What continues COVID or non COVID, is babies are being born.”
The midwives at Elmhurst tackle a range of duties including seeing each pregnant patient who comes to the hospital, gynecological clinic care, staff the labor and delivery floor, and working with midwifery and medical students and OB/GYN residents.
They say they have only had one raise in the last 10 years, and are still in negotiations two years after voting to join the New York State Nurses Association.
A spokesperson for Mt. Sinai said that they will be meeting with union representatives tomorrow to present a counterproposal that was approved by NYC Health and Hospitals.
“Midwives are an essential part of NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst’s Women’s Health team, and are integral to the services provided to the Elmhurst community,” they said. “Since before the pandemic, we have been in constant communication with the union and we are hopeful that we will reach a fair resolution in the near future.”
Elected officials including Assemblymembers Catalina Cruz and Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas were on hand to support their constituency.
They were joined by City Council candidates Shekar Krishnan and Tiffany Caban, who pointed out the “devastating and fatal” racial disparities in maternal healthcare.
“This hospital is the first point of care for the most vulnerable New Yorkers; for our Black and brown communities, for our immigrant communities, for our low income communities,” Caban said. “[Midwifery] is already work that deserves the kind of pay… that comes with how taxing the work that y’all do is. It is unconscionable that when that is exacerbated by a pandemic that you can't get the [support] you need and deserve.”
