#Hospital union’s strike threat in the midst of a pandemic is ‘lunacy’

Get a load of this: 1199SEIU, the powerful hospital-workers union, is threatening a strike even as COVID remains a danger.

It’s demanding a 23 percent pay hike over three years, or more than 7 percent annually, hospital sources told The Post. Counting benefits, the added cost is $3.6 billion. The current three-year contract, which expires Sept. 30, brought pay increases of 3 percent a year.

It’s as if the union thinks a global health crisis gives it leverage for a ruthless shakedown, even though New York regional hospitals lost about $1 billion in 2020, even after accounting for $4 billion in federal aid.

Some 1199 members certainly have no qualms about leaving the public in the lurch: “Let the strike begin,” said one union activist at Montefiore Hospital.

Yes, health-care workers have gone above and beyond in their service to the community during the pandemic. But that doesn’t justify blackmail as the region struggles with Delta and the threat of Lambda.

A strike threat is, as one hospital executive worded it, “lunacy.”