Public Hospital Residents Win Contract Deal, Reaching Parity With Private Peers

The Health + Hospitals Corporation, which operates the city’s 11 public hospitals, and the union representing about 2,300 of its resident physicians reached a tentative six-year agreement on Tuesday after more than nine months of negotiations.

The deal, which is still pending ratification from members, gives an immediate 9.27% raise retroactive to 2021 and then adds 3% in December followed by 3.25% in December 2025.

Those raises  would put their salaries on par with peers at private safety-net hospitals , according to the union, plus an “equity adjustment” ranging from $1,131 for more experienced residents to $4,000 for those in their first three years to bring starting salaries up to more than $76,000. The residents will also receive ratification bonuses upon signing of up to $6,000.

For current first-year residents, the deal would amount to a nearly 23% raise by the end of next year.

The doctors, who are members of the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU, have been working under a contract that expired in December 2021 and received their last contractually scheduled raise in March 2020.

Getting on par with private-hospital peers was “our only demand,” said Dr. Salma Sadaf, a third-year pediatrics resident at Kings County Hospital and a member of the union’s bargaining committee. But the fight was about more than just money, she said.

“Fair compensation, even though it’s important, I think it was more about respect. It was about acknowledging our contribution, as resident doctors, that we make to the health care system, and also about how much we stood up for the city and the healthcare system during COVID,” she said. “This was just the right thing to do.”

Spokespeople from the city Health + Hospitals Corporation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The deal spans every public hospital except Elmhurst Hospital, where residents are members of CIR-SEIU but bargain separately from other facilities in the H+H system because their program is operated by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The union and H+H came to an agreement in a Zoom bargaining session Tuesday night, following several demonstrations by residents in recent months outside city hospitals and Gracie Mansion to pressure the administration of Mayor Eric Adams to cut a deal. Dr. Sadaf credited the job actions with pushing the city to settle.

The contract, which is retroactive to 2021 and expires in June 2027, also includes a boost in meal allowances and increases to the city’s investment in the union’s patient care trust fund , which is used to buy hospital equipment and support public health projects.

According to estimates from the union, residents — medical school graduates taking part in postgraduate training — make up about half of all physicians in New York’s public hospital system.

The contract talks gave doctors an opportunity to capitalize on a surge in health care labor organizing in New York and beyond to win substantial raises.

More than 1,200 medical residents unionized at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx in 2022, and unionized doctors at Mount Sinai facilities in Harlem and the West Side achieved pay parity with their non-union colleagues last year after threatening to walk out on the job. At Elmhurst Hospital , residents won higher salaries and other benefits after striking for the first time in a generation last May.

Union members will vote on whether to approve the contract from May 31 through June 5.

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