NewYork-Presbyterian Nurses Reject Contract By Overwhelming Margin

By Claudia Irizarry Aponte and Ben Fractenberg, The City

Feb. 12, 2026

NewYork-Presbyterian nurses rejected a tentative agreement by overwhelming margins Wednesday, voting to extend their strike — now 30 days running — against the hospital.

Their union, the New York State Nurses Association, said the unfair labor practice strike and bargaining will continue.

At Mount Sinai and Montefiore, nurses voted to approve their contracts Wednesday and will return to work this weekend.

Nurses at the three hospital systems have been on strike since Jan. 12 trying to secure stronger nurse-to-patient ratios, claiming that staffing shortages put their and their patients’ wellbeing at risk. Those who approved their contracts will return to work no later than Feb. 14.

Earlier Wednesday, more than 50 nurses delivered a petition to New York State Nurses Association headquarters demanding a formal disciplinary investigation into top union leadership over members’ assertions that leaders are forcing a vote on a tentative agreement with NewYork-Presbyterian that rank-and-file representatives already rejected at the bargaining table.

It was not immediately clear what mechanism the union has to investigate the actions of its two top executives, Nancy Hagans, the NYSNA president, and Pat Kane, its executive director. Nurses also demanded that the findings of the probe be subject to a full hearing open to all of its members.

The spontaneous action was organized hours after NYSNA and NewYork-Presbyterian announced an agreement Tuesday night to end its strike. More than 1,500 nurses had signed the petition the group delivered to union leadership, according to the organizers.

NYSNA’s decision to forge ahead with a vote at NewYork-Presbyterian had infuriated members who said they stood by their executive committee’s assertion that the deal did not meet their needs. NYSNA has executive committees at each of its hospitals; those committees are made up of union members who participate in contract negotiations.

Beth Loudin, a neonatal nurse and member of the executive committee at NewYork-Presbyterian, said top union leadership informed her it was moving ahead with a vote Tuesday afternoon — days after she and the committee rejected it.

“I can’t even call it a memorandum of agreement, because there’s no signature on it,” said Loudin. “This is a rush job to get a vote out, because it’s in alignment with the other hospitals. It was very jarring.”

Presbyterian nurses bargaining committee leader Beth Loudin delivers a letter to NYSNA leaders at their Midtown office, which was signed by over 1,000 striking nurses expressing their opposition to a contract deal agreed upon without their knowledge, Feb. 11, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

The three-year agreement was pending ratification by the union’s 4,200 rank-and-file members, who had until 5 p.m. Wednesday to approve or reject the deal. The tentative agreement included the same 12% salary increases that the union secured in earlier deals with Mount Sinai and Montefiore, but it did not guarantee nurse-to-patient ratio enforcement language available to nurses at those hospitals.

On Tuesday Kane, the union’s executive director, addressed the controversy at NewYork-Presbyterian in a video to members that was included in an email with the ballot, first obtained by Gothamist: “The simple fact is that we’ve reached the end of negotiations.”

“They are overriding our voices,” said NewYork-Presbyterian nurse educator Cagatay Chelik.

Nurses marched from Macy’s on 34th Street to the union’s headquarters a block south on West 33rd to deliver the petition on Wednesday, chanting “We are your nurses! Listen to your nurses!”

Asked for comment on the union members’ petition and protest, a NYSNA spokesperson referred THE CITY to an earlier statement by Hagans, the union’s president, where she urged her members not to rush to judgment.

“We believe all striking nurses deserve to see the details of their tentative agreements and get the opportunity to vote on whether to ratify a new contract,” said Hagans. “As a democratic, member-led union that responds to its members, we are moving forward with a vote on tentative contracts at all four hospitals with the goal of returning all nurses to work as soon as possible.”

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‘Sold us out to management’

Loudin and about a half dozen other union colleagues became visibly emotional as they delivered the signed petition to NYSNA’s general counsel and contract specialists who were summoned to the lobby to meet with the protesting nurses. Hagans and Kane did not meet with the nurses.

“It’s been truly painful personally that my union decided to go against my leadership and my nurses,” Loudin told the union’s contract specialists. “We’ve been fighting for this for six months.”

The strike has been the longest and largest of its kind in New York City history.

Nurses who spoke with THE CITY said they felt betrayed by their top leaders.

“Unfortunately now we’re at a point in which our union’s senior leadership, specifically our executive director and the president, have sold us out to management,” said Esteban Barrena, a nurse at NYP-Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.

The union had touted the tentative agreement at NewYork-Presbyterian as a victory for nurses, securing commitments to preserve the union’s healthcare and benefits and to hire more staff in order to improve nurse-to-patient ratios.

The union’s executive committee had rejected the deal because the staffing proposals that the mediator had recommended would not guarantee job security for existing nurses, Loudin said. It also does not include the same staffing ratio enforcement language that nurses at Mount Sinai and Montefiore have had in their contracts since 2023, which the union has touted as some of the most secure in the country.

“This is the reason we’ve been fighting for all of this,” added Barrena. “Why would union leadership compromise on that?”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.