The Biggest Nurse Strikes in America, Ranked by Impact

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).

Updated 7/8/26

Not every nurse strike lands the same way. A one-day walkout at a single hospital is one thing. Tens of thousands of nurses leaving an entire health system for weeks is another. So we built a way to measure the difference.

Our Nurse.org Strike Impact Score looks at four things we can verify for each of the 107 strikes in our database: how many nurses took part, how long the walkout lasted, how many hospitals were involved, and how many states it touched. Put together, they give each strike a single score from 0 to 100 and let us rank which ones hit the hardest.

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The Strike Impact Score is our own proprietary measure that combines four verifiable facts about each strike: the number of nurses involved, how long it lasted, how many hospitals were affected, and how many states it reached. Every figure is checked against a primary source. The underlying facts of each strike appear in each strike record.

The two highest-impact actions both involve Kaiser Permanente. In January 2026, around 31,000 nurses and other health care workers began an open-ended strike across California that ran for weeks. A few months earlier, in October 2025, roughly 31,000 Kaiser nurses and health care workers had already walked out for five days in a strike their union called historic, a number later confirmed in coverage by the Los Angeles Times.

The ranking rewards staying power, not just numbers. Nearly 5,000 nurses across Providence’s eight Oregon hospitals ranked third on the strength of a roughly six-week strike in early 2025, one of the longest multi-hospital walkouts in recent memory.

Duration alone can carry a strike into the top tier. The clearest example is unfolding right now in Michigan: roughly 750 nurses at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc have been on strike since September 2025, making it the longest active nurse strike in the country. It is also the only Teamsters-led nurse strike in our database, and it remains unresolved over staffing levels — a reminder that a single-hospital walkout can rank among the biggest strikes in America if the nurses stay out long enough.

And the 301-day strike at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, the longest nurses strike in state history, lands in the top tier even though only about 700 nurses took part. Time on the line counts for a lot.

A strike that spans several states climbs the list. In September 2019, the California Nurses Association organized a one-day strike across 12 Tenet hospitals in Arizona, California, and Florida. It lasted a single day, but its three-state reach earned it a spot near the top.

Some of the highest-ranking strikes draw their force from numbers built across job titles, not just nurses. The two Kaiser actions at the top of our list were coalition strikes, where registered nurses walked out alongside pharmacists, therapists, nurse practitioners, and other health care professionals under a shared union banner. That is part of why they are so large. It is also why they are so costly: Kaiser reported that the 2026 strike cost it more than $1 billion in a single quarter, largely in temporary staffing.

Most nurse strikes are not like that. In our data, the clear majority involved registered nurses on their own, while a smaller group joined with other health care workers. Coalition strikes are rarer, but when they happen, their combined size can shut down services across an entire system at once, which is exactly what pushes them to the top of the impact rankings.

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The next big entry may already be taking shape. After a 99.6% authorization vote, the largest nurse strike vote in Massachusetts history, the Massachusetts Nurses Association filed a formal strike notice setting a July 8 walkout for roughly 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, alongside about 450 MGB Home Care clinicians. If they walk out as planned, the rankings will shift again.

To see every confirmed and planned action, visit our 2026 nurse strikes list. For more on the biggest action of the current wave, read about the Kaiser strike across California and Hawaii.

Related Nurse Strike Intelligence Analysis:

🤔 Which of these strikes do you remember most? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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