Mount Sinai residents at H+H/Elmhurst on strike

About 160 resident physicians at New York City Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst who are employed by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are on strike for five days as of this morning, the city’s first doctor strike since 1990.

The residents, who are represented by the Committee of Interns and Residents union, first voted to authorize a strike at the beginning of May, citing unfair labor practices and saying that Mount Sinai has been bargaining in bad faith. They say that Sinai’s Elmhurst residents make thousands of dollars less than their counterparts at Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side.

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“We were the workers who scraped together pieces to take care of our patients during the pandemic,” Dr. Irfa Khan, a psychiatry resident, said in a CIR press release this morning. “And in the midst of that everyone called us healthcare heroes, but now that it’s time to take care of us as healthcare heroes, Mount Sinai won’t step up.”

The doctors demand pay parity with their non-union resident counterparts at Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. CIR has also filed unfair labor practice charges against the health system, arguing that Sinai has been bargaining in bad faith.

The residents’ last bargaining session with the health system occurred on Thursday, May 18, but the parties still could not reach an agreement.

According to documents on Mount Sinai’s website, the residents and the health system have met 14 times over the past 10 months, and the hospital has proposed including a chief resident stipend, a six-week paid leave of absence, an expanded medical education benefit and creating language for hazard pay.

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The documents say that at the May 18 bargaining session, Sinai offered Elmhurst residents a 7% salary increase retroactive to November 2022, an 6% increase in December 2023 and a 5% increase in January 2025 for a total 19% increase over three years.

“The final offer that was placed on the table last night represents an unprecedented level of funding injected into a labor contract supporting an H+H operation,” the documents read. “The union bears responsibility for the outcome of these negotiations since this wage proposal is equal to or greater than those accepted by the CIR at other hospitals in New York.”

The doctors’ decision to strike comes just days after other residents at Queens hospitals avoided strikes by reaching a tentative agreement with their employer, MediSys Health, and after a flurry of unionization activity among residents in the city. According to Sinai representative Lucia Lee, Sinai’s offer is commensurate or above that offered to Jamaica and Flushing hospitals residents.

Crain’s has reached out to H+H/Elmhurst for comment.

This is a developing story.

This story first appeared in Crain's New York Business.