Contract negotiations have been an ongoing point of friction between the New York State Nurses Association and Albany Medical Center.
The nurses’ union at Albany Medical Center reached a tentative four-year agreement that will benefit 1,600 nurses, according to an announcement Monday.
It's been a long haul for the NYSNA nurses, who voted to join the union in 2018 and immediately called on the hospital to increase the staff-to-patient ratio.
“We’re raising awareness to the community, for them to know that we are fighting for something big. Big. Bigger than what we ever thought,” said ICU Nurse Jennifer Bejo in 2019, at a time when contract negotiations had been ongoing for over a year. After three years, numerous negotiation sessions, a pandemic, and strike, NYSNA nurses voted overwhelmingly on July 1st, 2021 to ratify a contract they say gave them a stronger voice in patient care, as well as union and financial security.
But even with that contract in place, nurses continued lobbying for safe-staffing and additional pay. And when that contract expired July 31st, 2024, it marked the beginning of a new contract negotiation deadlock.
The roughly one-year impasse may now be coming to an end with nurses voting Monday and Tuesday on ratifying a new contract. The deal includes enforceable safe staffing ratios, a 16% to 22% first-year wage increase upon ratification, a market parity increase over two more years of the contract, along with additional 3% annual increases in the following years and no wage caps for experienced nurses.
The tentative deal comes after the union rejected what the hospital had called its "last and best" contract offer in December. That offer included retroactive pay back to August 1. Hospital President and CEO Dr. Dennis McKenna maintained that Albany Med continue as an "open shop" in the face of the bargaining group’s demands that all nurses be automatically enrolled as union members.
"The union's sole interest is money in their pocket, collecting dues from members and requiring all Albany Med nurses to auto enroll and become dues paying members, whether they agree to it or not," McKenna said.
In February 2025, a state Department of Health report found 480 staffing violations at Albany Med, including 32 in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, during a six-month period between October 2023 and April 2024.
Contract negotiations continued as NYSNA demanded to see the full report. Bejo, the local bargaining unit president, alleged the hospital routinely failed to "listen to its nurses."
"Chief among our concerns is our employer’s refusal to acknowledge and meaningfully address the ongoing staffing and patient care at Albany Medical Center," said Bejo.
Time after time, Albany Med responded to WAMC requests for comment with written statements indicating the hospital was "safely staffed."
The nurses are voting to ratify the contract, and the results will be released late Tuesday.
