These Hospitals Get Struck Again and Again: The Repeat-Strike Employers

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

Most hospitals never see a nurse strike. A smaller group sees them again and again. When we tracked 107 confirmed nurse walkouts, a clear pattern emerged: a handful of health systems account for repeated strikes, sometimes year after year, as the same staffing and contract disputes go unresolved.

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University Medical Center in New Orleans Stands Out

No employer in our database has been struck more often than University Medical Center in New Orleans. Nurses there, represented by National Nurses United, have walked out repeatedly since 2024. The first was a one-day strike in October 2024, followed by a series of further actions through 2025 and into 2026. The repeated walkouts point to a contract fight that has not found resolution.

Other systems show the same cycle. Nurses at Providence hospitals in Oregon struck in 2023, 2024, and again in 2025, when a walkout stretched to roughly six weeks. At USC’s Keck Medicine in Los Angeles, nurses walked out in 2021, 2025, and 2026. San Joaquin General Hospital in California saw actions across 2020 and 2025.

What links these cases is not bad luck. Repeated strikes usually signal a deeper standoff, where short walkouts apply pressure but the underlying disputes over staffing, pay, and working conditions keep returning to the table.

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The New Orleans case shows how a repeat-strike fight evolves. The six walkouts there did not simply repeat the same complaint. Each centered on a different flashpoint, from union recognition and a first contract, to workplace violence, to claims of retaliation against staff, to nurse retention. The walkouts also grew longer over time, from a single day at the start to a multi-day strike by 2026. That escalation is the signature of a dispute that keeps failing to resolve, with each round raising the stakes.

Repeated walkouts are often a sign of a contract fight that has not been settled, but a related pattern is just as telling: strikes to win a first contract at all.

Across our database, 16 strikes were fights by newly organized nurses who had no agreement yet, and 9 of those were still unresolved as of mid-2026. These disputes drag on because the employer has every incentive to delay and the nurses are starting from nothing, with no existing contract to fall back on. When a first-contract fight stalls, it can produce exactly the kind of repeat walkouts seen at the systems above. New Orleans is the clearest case: all six of its walkouts were part of a single, still-unsettled fight for a first contract.

For nurses, a repeat-strike employer is useful information. It suggests a workplace where management and staff have struggled to reach lasting agreement, and where the staffing concerns driving the conflict have proven persistent. For patients and communities, it points to instability that a single contract has not fixed.

The pattern also helps explain the rising strike numbers overall. When one campaign produces several walkouts at the same hospital, the count climbs quickly.

To follow these ongoing disputes, see our 2026 nurse strikes list. For the bigger picture on why nurses keep returning to the picket line, read what we learned from nursing strikes.

🤔 Has your hospital been struck more than once — or has your unit gone back to the picket line during the same contract fight? What kept the dispute from resolving the first time? Share your experience in the comments below.

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