Overview
- More than 4,000 registered nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital will stage a one-day strike on Wednesday and about 450 Mass General Brigham home-care clinicians will begin a seven-day strike the same morning, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association.
- The union says the hospital will impose a multi-day lockout because Mass General Brigham must assign temporary agency nurses to minimum multi-day shifts, a staffing rule that could keep striking nurses off the job beyond the one-day walkout.
- Mass General Brigham says it has oriented roughly 1,300 temporary nurses, including clinicians credentialed for high-acuity units, and that contingency plans will keep the hospital open with only limited appointment or procedure changes.
- Negotiations remain stalled after a State House meeting convened by Governor Maura Healey produced no new movement, with the union saying MGB refused to budge from a 0% across-the-board cost-of-living offer and the system defending its 5% annual step increases.
- Union leaders point to MGB’s reported assets and recent net gains and to multi-million-dollar executive pay as reasons the system can meet demands, while patients and some nurses warn that substituting temporary staff risks continuity of care in complex units such as the NICU.