One Year on the Picket Line: Inside the Henry Ford Genesys Nurses’ Strike

Image source: Mid-Michigan NOW

Part of Nurse.org’s Nurse Strike Intelligence data series, built on a proprietary database tracking a decade of U.S. registered-nurse strikes (2017–2026).

One year ago, on Labor Day 2025, roughly 750 nurses and case workers walked off the job at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc, Michigan. This week, they marked one full year on the picket line, with no contract and no end in sight.

In our database of 108 confirmed U.S. nurse walkouts from 2017 through 2026, the Genesys strike is the longest single-hospital nurse strike we have tracked, surpassing the 301-day strike at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, the next-longest in that dataset.

Surprisingly, several earlier U.S. nurse strikes ran longer. Nurses at Northern Michigan Hospital in Petoskey, represented by the Teamsters, struck for roughly three years starting in 2002, a dispute a member of Congress once called the longest nurses’ strike in the nation’s history. Genesys is the longest we have recorded in the modern era we track, not the longest ever.

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The nurses, represented by Teamsters Local 332, had been in negotiations since the spring of 2025. When talks stalled, the union says 93 percent of the bargaining unit rejected the hospital’s last, best, and final offer and filed a 10-day notice to strike. Local 332 president Dan Glass said the sticking points were nurse-to-patient ratios and cuts to premium pay.

Henry Ford Health, which took over Genesys in 2024, has maintained throughout that its patients are safe and that it has bargained in good faith. It has also argued that Genesys has been losing money and that contract terms must preserve the hospital’s long-term viability, citing average annual losses it put at roughly $50 million. The hospital began hiring new nurses in November 2025 to keep the hospital running during what it calls an indefinite strike.

What the Nurses and the Hospital Each Say

The core dispute has not moved much in a year. The union says the fight is about safe staffing and getting striking nurses their jobs back. “The more nurses there are, the better outcomes for all the patients, which is what we’re out here fighting for,” Genesys RN Kim Christman told WNEM early in the strike.

A central sticking point has been the return-to-work terms: the union wants striking nurses restored to their pre-strike positions and shifts, while Henry Ford says it will guarantee employment and seniority but not every nurse’s exact former assignment, since positions have been filled or changed during the strike.

Henry Ford Health frames it differently, and the competing numbers are worth separating. The union’s roughly 750 figure is the bargaining unit as it stood when the strike began. The hospital says more than 350 nurses have since either worked through the strike or been hired after it, and that the facility as a whole is kept running by its full workforce of more than 2,500 employees. Neither side has published a reliable current count of how many nurses are still actively withholding labor. It points to wage increases of up to 13% and staffing commitments in its standing offer, and argues the hospital has remained safely staffed throughout.

The federal labor board has repeatedly declined to side with the union so far. NLRB Region 7 in Detroit has dismissed three separate unfair labor practice charges tied to the strike: one in April over allegedly delayed health-insurance data, and two more over bad-faith-bargaining claims in July and August 2026. The union appealed the first two dismissals, and separately withdrew another charge in April. A small number of claims remain open.

The union disputes the hospital’s framing and maintains the walkout is a lawful unfair-labor-practice strike. The distinction is not academic: a ULP strike carries stronger reinstatement protections than an economic strike, which is part of what makes the return-to-work fight so central. The hospital also notes that several of the union’s other pending charges date to 2022–2024, when Genesys was run by its prior operator, Ascension.

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On September 28, 2025, a gunman attacked a church in Grand Blanc, killing four people and wounding others in one of the deadliest days in the county’s recent history. Henry Ford Genesys treated 10 people from the attack, five with gunshot wounds and five with smoke-related injuries, and publicly thanked its staff for the response. Several striking nurses said they also tried to help.

According to Nurse.org’s reporting and local coverage, a handful of ER nurses crossed their own picket line and were let into the hospital, working briefly before administration asked them to leave; they then went to the scene, checking vitals, handing out water, and supporting survivors. That account is the nurses’ own; Henry Ford, which said it was fully staffed for the emergency, has not confirmed the specific sequence.

The two sides described the hospital encounter differently. Henry Ford said it was fully staffed, that striking nurses no longer had access to medical records or medications, and that adding people to a mass-casualty response could have compromised care; it also asked that the tragedy not be used “as a bargaining tool.” The nurses framed their attempt to help as separate from the labor dispute. “It’s just about doing the right thing,” ER nurse Paige Lamb told Nurse.org. Both striking nurses and the hospital’s working staff took part in the community’s response to the attack.

Long nurse strikes are rare. Most walkouts in our data are short by design: 36 of the 108 strikes we track (about 1 in 3) lasted a single day. Only a handful have ever stretched past a month, which is what makes the Genesys strike so unusual.

The Longest Nurse Strikes in Our Database

Every other strike on that list ended with a ratified contract. The Saint Vincent nurses stayed out 301 days and ratified a contract with firm limits on patient loads. Unlike those strikes, Genesys remains unresolved after a full year, still without a deal.

A year in, the two sides remain far apart on the same issues that started the walkout: ratios, pay, and whether striking nurses are guaranteed their old jobs. State and federal mediators have been involved for months without a breakthrough. For now, the picket line outside Genesys continues, one year after the walkout began.

To follow this and every active nurse strike, see our 2026 nurse strikes list.

This is a developing story. Details reflect events through September 1, 2026, while bargaining remains unresolved. Figures are attributed to their primary sources.

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