Five Nurse Strikes Are Set for July: Why Thousands of Nurses Are Walking Out

July is shaping up to be one of the busiest stretches for nurse labor action in recent memory. In the span of a single week, nurses at five different health systems — in Michigan, Maryland, Kansas, Massachusetts, and New York — are set to walk off the job. The hospitals are different, the cities are far apart, but the reasons nurses give are strikingly similar: they say there are not enough of them at the bedside to keep patients safe.

Here is a look at each of the five scheduled strikes, why nurses say they are walking out, and what to watch for.

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The first of the month’s actions has already come and gone. On Friday, July 3, about 178 nurses at MyMichigan Medical Center Alma in central Michigan, represented by the Michigan Nurses Association, began a three-day strike that ended at 7 a.m. Monday, July 6. Unlike the others, this was an unfair labor practice strike — a walkout called in response to conduct the union says was illegal, rather than over contract terms alone.

The nurses’ contract expired February 16, and the union filed several unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the hospital of withdrawing proposals after receiving the strike notice, changing shift-trade and psychiatric-nurse assignment policies without bargaining, and communicating directly with staff about proposals never brought to the table.

Pay is also a flashpoint: the hospital’s final offer included no raise in the first year and 1 percent in each of the next two, which the union says would leave nearly one in four Alma nurses with no wage increase at all in year one. Nurses voted 98 percent to authorize the strike back in May. 

Two groups of nurses at Ascension hospitals are set to hold one-day strikes on the same day, Monday, July 6.

• In Baltimore, roughly 600 nurses at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital, represented by National Nurses United, plan to walk out for 24 hours. The nurses say management has cut staffing hours and leaned on unsafe “floating” — moving nurses into units they are not trained for, such as sending medical-surgical nurses to care for newborns and new mothers. They have been bargaining for a first contract since early 2024. It is their second one-day strike; the first came in July 2025.
• In Wichita, Kansas, nearly 1,200 nurses at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and St. Joseph hospitals, also with National Nurses United, plan their own one-day strike. Their central demand is protection against workplace violence. The union’s strike notice points to serious safety incidents at the hospitals, and nurses say they have been asking for measures like weapons-detection systems for years without action. Safe staffing and retention of experienced nurses are also on the table.

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July 8: Brigham and Women’s, the Largest of the Five

The biggest action of the month is scheduled for Tuesday, July 8, in Boston. The Massachusetts Nurses Association says roughly 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, plus about 450 clinicians at MGB Home Care, plan to walk out — a combined action the union calls the largest nurse and health care worker strike in Massachusetts history.

The Brigham nurses have planned a one-day strike, but their employer, Mass General Brigham, has said it intends to keep them out for four additional days afterward. The MGB Home Care clinicians plan a seven-day walkout.

Nurses point to staffing and patient care as the core issues, along with wages and the cost of health insurance. They have been in negotiations since late 2025 and say the two sides have reached tentative agreement on more than a dozen items, but remain apart on the biggest ones.

July 13: St. Charles Hospital on Long Island

Next week, about 300 nurses at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, New York, part of Catholic Health, are scheduled to strike beginning Monday, July 13. Represented by the New York State Nurses Association, they voted by more than 99 percent to authorize the action after their contract expired in the spring.

Their central concern is nurse-to-patient staffing. The nurses say the hospital routinely understaffs and does not follow required staffing ratios. Catholic Health has denied the allegations and says the hospital will stay open with a contingency plan if a strike goes forward.

Five strikes, five cities, one recurring theme. In each case, nurses put safe staffing at or near the top of their list of demands — the number of patients a single nurse is responsible for at one time. Wages and workplace safety come up too, but staffing is the through-line. It is the same issue driving a broader wave of nurse labor action that has been building for years.

Nurse strikes are happening more than ever, but the news around them is scattered and hard to follow. One walkout makes headlines, another disappears after a day, and it is tough to see the bigger picture: how often nurses are striking, why, and what actually comes of it.

A single walkout is hard to make sense of on its own. But seen against a decade of nurse strikes, it starts to answer the questions that actually matter to nurses weighing their own options: how often walkouts happen, what nurses tend to win, and what it takes to get there. That’s why Nurse.org built the Nurse Strike Intelligence data series.

If you want that fuller picture, start with Do Nurse Strikes Actually Work? We Looked at 100+ Walkouts to Find Out, and follow every active and planned strike on our 2026 nurse strikes list, where we will track all five of July’s actions as they unfold.

Related Nurse Strike Intelligence Analysis:

🤔 Are you at one of the five hospitals walking out this month — or watching a strike vote build where you work? Share what you’re seeing in the comments below.