Nearly 200 doctors at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens went on strike Monday morning, marking the first time in more than 30 years that physicians have taken the drastic labor action in New York City.
The residents, students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, are pushing back on what they say is second-class treatment compared to peers who work in Manhattan by demanding better pay and benefits. The strike is planned for five days.
Elmhurst was among the first — and hardest — hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The strike is an example of the growing post-COVID labor movement that has swept NYC’s healthcare industry this year.
The work stoppage is centered around the issue of pay parity: Union residents at Elmhurst Hospital say they make up to $7,000 less every year compared to the residents working at Mount Sinai Hospital on E 98th St. in Manhattan.
“It feels fundamentally like Mount Sinai is saying that this community does not matter, like we Elmhurst residents do not matter,” Samkit Jain, a second-year resident in internal medicine, said. “I can’t tell you how much that stings, but this just isn’t about our feelings. There are material consequences when we live within a profit driven healthcare system.”
Elmhurst Hospital is a 545-bed safety-net hospital serving mainly low-income patients and immigrants in the Queens neighborhood run by the city’s Health+Hospitals system. The striking doctors are employed by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, not the hospital.
“Elmhurst just being one of the hardest hit areas by the pandemic, it seems like a no-brainer that Mount Sinai would want to make this investment but we’re just here been fighting for equal pay for essentially almost a year,” Jain said.
Staff at Elmhurst have taken on extra shifts and other clinicians have been pulled from other H+H facilities to fill in the coverage gaps from the strike, according to a spokesperson. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has also sent clinicians from other locations to help at the hospital.
“While we hope they reach an agreement to end the strike, we are fully prepared and have planned ahead to provide the necessary staff coverage,” Christopher Miller, a spokesperson for Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst.
Mouri Matin, a resident in internal medicine at Elmhurst said that residents often work in Mount Sinai’s E. 98th St. hospital, and vice versa. That, combined with sky-high rent prices and inflation, makes the pay disparity between the two hospitals even more unjust to her.
“We’re all doing the same exact work,” said Matin. “We’re all treating the same patients. They spend half their time here and we go there. It’s just unfair. Why is there a disparity between the two cohorts and residents that work in the same hospital? That doesn’t make sense.”
According to Mount Sinai, the residents rejected its last offer — a 19.1% compounded pay raise over the next three years.
“We are committed to working towards an equitable and reasonable resolution that is in the best interest for both our residents at Elmhurst as well as for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and are working closely with partners at Elmhurst Hospital to ensure the same quality and level of care and services that the local community expects and deserves are not affected by the strike,” Lucia Lee, a spokesperson for Mount Sinai, said in a statement.
The union said they’ve filed four unfair labor practices to the National Labor Relations Board.
Mount Sinai maintains that they bargained in good faith and over 14 sessions in the past months.
Elmhurst Hospital was once the epicenter of COVID for the country and a warning sign of the devastation still to come from the pandemic. Residents say that makes this strike all the more important and symbolic for the healthcare industry.
“It’s not good enough for Mount Sinai and others to bang pots and pans at the height of the pandemic but then, not give you your pay parity, your just do, as we make our way through and as the city opens up,” Donovan Richards, Queens Borough President said at a press conference.
Images from that time are burned into Tanathun Kajornsakchai’s brain, who in 2020 was a first-year psychiatry resident. His stomach still drops when he thinks of the bodies piled in freezer trucks, residents going from patient to patient to call up families so they could say their last goodbyes and doctors crying in the hallway.
Kajornsakchai said that pay parity is an important step in achieving a more equitable healthcare system.
“What we’re doing now is to lay groundwork for future doctors to come to make sure that if this does happen again, we are protected and we will be taken care of,” said Kajornsakchai, who is an immigrant from Thailand.
Residents at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and Flushing Hospital Medical Center, both owned by Medisys Health Network, narrowly averted a strike last week after reaching an agreement just hours before the strike was slated to start.
Also Monday, resident doctors at Mount Sinai’s Morningside hospital voted to authorize a strike.