Resident doctors went on strike early this week at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, which was particularly hard hit by Covid-19 in 2020. This is the first doctors’ strike in New York City in 33 years. One hundred and fifty trainee doctors walked out to push back against the low pay they receive for “extremely long hours and grueling work.” The doctors are demanding pay parity with non-union physicians at Mount Sinai, the hospital that runs Elmhurst’s residency program. Elmhurst residents currently earn $7,000 less per year than non-union physicians at Mount Sinai. 

SUNYATA ALTENOR; communications@cirseiu.org  
    Altenor is the communications director of the Committee of Interns and Residents / SEIU. 

Altenor told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “Resident physicians have had enough––of profit-driven health care, of being exploited, of being asked to do too much with far too little. They are rising up and that is no more clear than at Elmhurst Hospital, where they are on strike for the first time in more than 30 years of CIR [Committee of Interns and Residents] history after bringing Queens through the pandemic. Mount Sinai can end their strike right now… by coming to a resolution that honors their labor.” 

In July, Mount Sinai residents will begin to make $11,000 more than Elmhurst residents currently make. (A first-year resident at Elmhurst makes $68,000; those at Mount Sinai will make $79,000.)

Rachel Nass, who is on the CIR picket line, writes that Elmhurst “residents are calling for good faith bargaining and movement towards their demand of pay parity with their fellow Mount Sinai residents across the river in Manhattan.”