Medical Residents Strike for Higher Wages at NYC Hospital Formerly at Epicenter of Pandemic

NEW YORK — Some 160 medical residents went on strike Monday over what they called low wages at New York City’s Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital once known as the epicenter of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

The doctors-in-training at the Queens hospital, who are employees of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, are the first doctors to go on strike in the city since 1990, according to their union, the Committee of Interns and Local residents of the Service Employees International Union.

Mount Sinai “refuses to pay us the same as our co-workers who do the exact same job at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan,” said Dr. Joya Dupre, a second-year internal medicine resident at Elmhurst, in a union statement. . “It feels, fundamentally, like Mount Sinai is saying that this community doesn’t matter. Just like we, as Elmhurst residents, don’t matter, as largely immigrant union doctors.”

Mount Sinai issued a statement Monday saying it was “working toward a fair and reasonable resolution that is in the interest of both our Elmhurst residents and Mount Sinai Health System.” He also said he was working with Elmhurst on contingency plans to ensure patient care is not affected by the strike.

The resident doctors and Mount Sinai have been in negotiations for nearly a year. A five-day strike is planned.

Salary has been the main sticking point. The union says first-year Mount Sinai resident physicians who work in Elmhurst earn about $7,000 less a year than their peers who work at Mount Sinai’s main Manhattan campus.

Also Monday, the union announced that another 500 resident doctors at Mount Sinai Morningside/West in Manhattan have authorized a strike, also over pay.

Elmhurst was among several city hospitals overrun by the coronavirus when the pandemic began. Elmhurst medical staff described patients arriving panting, seemingly non-stop, ventilators were running low and the death toll was so high that a refrigerated truck from the morgue had to be parked outside.