Learn about the four new September nurse strikes at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital, Saint Louis University Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Nursing CE Central
Labor strikes are a powerful tool that places bargaining leverage in the hands of workers. For nurses, not only do strikes let them negotiate on behalf of their peers but also on behalf of their patients.
Nursing strikes and the unions organizing them give nurses a collective voice to negotiate for better working conditions, safer staffing practices, and other benefits. This collective voice has only become more powerful as the nursing shortage continues to hurt the healthcare industry.
Before September 2023, there were at least 22 nursing strikes across the United States. These strikes hope to improve the working conditions for the 4.3 million nurses currently working as well as the outcomes for the patients these nurses serve.
This article will detail all of the nursing strikes in September 2023, including the common problems these strikes aim to fix.
The following four strikes represented over 1,900 nurses across four states.
On September 6th, nurses at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey in California protested in a one-day strike to address staff recruitment and retention concerns. The union is also protesting for better working conditions in the nurses’ contract, as the hospital previously negotiated to waive time-off policies in the bargaining process.
Retention is a consistent problem at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital, where nurses feel as though contract nurses often outnumber RNs at the facility. Sophie Sabido, an RN at the hospital, stated, “We’re striking because enough is enough. It’s time management gets serious about the conditions driving nurses away from our facility. A fair contract that implements nurses’ solutions to these problems is the best way to do that.”
On September 11th, nurses at Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital began a three-day strike in protest of stalled contract negotiations and alleged illegal activity from the hospital. Negotiations between nurses and Ascension have been ongoing since 2022.
Local 40 represents 270 nurses and radiology technologists at Ascension in Rochester. When voting to authorize this strike, 100% of eligible union voters participated.
The union alleges the following illegal actions:
These actions are part of the 16 unfair labor practices filed against Ascension. However, safe staffing continues to be a primary concern for the nurses who claim that they sometimes work with eight or nine patients at a time in the ICU, when safe staffing involves only working with one or two patients at a time.
On September 25th, nurses at Saint Louis University Hospital (SLUH) held their first-ever strike in protest against the hospital’s refusal to address safe staffing concerns and workplace violence. This one-day strike comes as a response to contract negotiations beginning in May of 2023, with no progress on the nurses’ key concerns.
Staffing is the primary concern for nurses at SLUH, which has had an RN vacancy rate of at least 30% since Spring 2022. The hospital has hired 1,600 nurses over the past three years, but most of those nurses have since left.
Short staffing also impacts the nurses’ concerns about workplace violence. Patients and their families can become frustrated and impatient due to delays from staffing shortages.
“We have proposed many protections and practices to prevent workplace violence, but management has not given them serious consideration. It is SSM Health’s responsibility to provide a safe work environment. Management needs to protect the spaces where people come to be healed by stopping physical violence and threats from ever occurring in the first place.” – Taylor Smith, RN in SLUH’s medical-surgical unit
On September 27th, nurses at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute protested in a one-day strike. This strike is a response to unsuccessful contract negotiations and unequal pay.
The nurses protesting are from Dana-Farber’s satellite office in Methuen, MA, just 30 miles north of the primary facility in Boston. Methuen’s nurses are negotiating for comparable pay to their Boston counterparts as they provide the same care with the same qualifications.
“We respect the fact we live outside of Boston, we’re OK with that but it shouldn’t be such a large gap,” explained Kate Mitchell, a nurse practitioner at Dana-Farber in Methuen.
Frustration over pay continued to grow as Dana-Farber announced a collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to construct a new, free-standing inpatient hospital for adult cancer patients. This new facility would be over 680,000 sq ft with a capacity of 300 beds and a proposed value of $1.67 billion.
Despite this strike only lasting for a day, nurses who participated will be banned from the building until the following Monday. Patients will be cared for by strike contract nurses in the interim.
In addition to the four new strikes, two strikes from earlier in the year continued into September. These strikes represent 2,600 nurses who continue negotiating and bargaining with their hospital’s administration.
Beginning on August 4th of this year, 1700 nurses represented by the United Steelworkers Health Care Workers Union at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital went on strike. This strike was authorized after three months of failed negotiations for safer staffing practices and increased benefits for nursing staff.
Nursing CE Central’s coverage of the RWJ strike can be found here.
It has now been 73 days since the strike began, and nurses are once again returning to the bargaining table with the hospital administration on October 15th. This will be the sixth bargaining meeting since the strike began.
On September 27th, Austin nurses returned to the picket line in a one-day rally against continued unsafe working conditions at Ascension Seton Medical Center. This is a continuation of the historic one-day strike from June 2023 where 2,000 nurses walked out, protesting against unsustainable working conditions.
Nursing CE Central’s Coverage of the Ascension Seton Medical Center Strike can be found here.
Ascension’s decision to build a $320 million women’s services facility, which plans to expand the delivery capacity to 7,500 (five times the current capacity), largely instigated this strike. Nurses at Ascension claim that current staffing shortages have laboring patients waiting up to 12 hours in the waiting room.
Nurses at Ascension have taken to filing Assignment Despite Objection forms on a daily basis. These forms are formal documentation submitted to the hospital when a nurse believes they are being made to work in unsafe or inadequate circumstances.
Ascension’s administration and representatives from the nurses’ union will soon return to the bargaining table to explore a strategy to sustainably recruit, train, and retain nurses at the facility.
As nursing employment contracts continue to come up for renewal, we will likely see ongoing negotiations to raise the standard level of care for nurses and their patients. These negotiations are added by new legislation that seeks to mandate safe staffing and working conditions for nurses at the state level.
Nurses continue to serve their patients and commit themselves to the highest level of care through sustainable and safe working conditions. These strikes are simply another testament to that commitment.
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