January 13, 2026 | 01:23 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed his support for thousands of nurses protesting their contracts with private hospitals. Zohran Mamdani joined the rally on Monday, January 12, 2026.
According to The New York Times, the controversial move has pitted the left-wing mayor against the CEOs of Mount Sinai, New York-Presbyterian, and Montefiore Medical Center. Referring to the hospital executives as the "wealthiest" in New York, he griped that these individuals do not struggle to "make ends meet."
The hospital executives who run these hospitals, the ones where these hardworking nurses are asking for what they deserve, these executives are not having difficulty making ends meet,” Zohran Mamdani said alongside the staff striking outside the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital in Washington Heights.
“But for too many of the 15,000 NYSNA nurses who are on strike, they are not able to make their ends meet,” Mamdani said. “They are not asking for a multimillion-dollar salary.”
Thousands of nurses in red uniforms gathered outside a Manhattan hospital holding signs with phrases such as “At least the blood on our hands washes off” and “Nurses are the beating heart of the medical system.”
Hospital officials and the New York State Nurses Association traded barbs, accusing each other of greed in a dispute about wages, benefits, and staffing levels, as 15,000 nurses began a mass strike.
“They bragged that they spent $100 million to hire out-of-town nurses to replace us while we strike, NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said.
The protesters held signs saying "HERO to ZERO" outside the New York Presbyterian Hospital. “They could have easily have put that money toward our health insurance,” she said. “Nurses are asking for safe staffing. We’re asking for work protection against workplace violence. We’re asking for the greedy CEOs not to take away our medical coverage.”
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani questioned Zohran Mamdani's reason for joining the protest. “Who does he think is going to help these patients during a strike? … Communist angels?” Giuliani said. "“People are gonna die because of it."
Giuliani stated that as mayor, Mamdani should not have joined the protest to defend workers providing essential services. “He should be pushing for arbitration to get a settlement.”
Al Jazeera reported that the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital reported a net income of US$547 million in 2024. Mount Sinai Hospital reported US$114 million in income, while Montefiore posted US$288.62 million, according to ProPublica, which monitors nonprofit organizations' finances, which all three hospitals are.
In 2021, New York state obliged hospitals to establish committees to outline staffing plans by division, including a minimum one-to-two nurse-to-patient ratio in critical care units. Two years later, after a three-day strike, nurses successfully pushed the hospital system, through arbitration, to enforce those standards across all hospital units.
The labor union accused the hospitals of walking back the standards and the hospital management of failing to agree to demands to strengthen protections for workers amid increasing workplace violence.
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