Nearly 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston vote Sept. 24 on whether to authorize an open-ended strike against Mass General Brigham — a step beyond the one-day walkout they staged in July, which ended in a four-day management lockout and no contract. The vote runs from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at multiple locations.
A bigger step than July
In June, Brigham and Women’s nurses voted 2,798-12 — 99.6% — to authorize the one-day strike that shut the hospital down on July 8 and triggered what the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) called the largest nurse strike in state history. That contract fight never resolved. Now the MNA says its roughly 4,000 members at the Brigham will vote on whether to authorize their bargaining committee to call an indefinite strike instead of another single-day action. A “yes” vote would not set a strike date — federal law still requires 10 days’ notice to the hospital before any walkout begins — but it would remove the one-day limit entirely, leaving the timing and length of any future strike up to the bargaining committee.
Why talks broke down
The two sides haven’t met at the bargaining table since August. A federal mediator told the MNA’s bargaining committee that Mass General Brigham considered negotiations at a “practical impasse” and did not want to keep meeting under the union’s current proposal. MGB has said the MNA’s ask — roughly $90 million a year in additional wage increases plus an $11.2 million ratification bonus — would push total annual nursing labor costs at the Brigham to nearly $1 billion, a level the health system has called unsustainable given “pressure on our ability to preserve access, affordability and long-term investment in patient care.” MGB spokesperson Jessica Pastore has said Brigham nurses are already among the highest-paid in Massachusetts and the country, with compensation in the top 10% of the acute-care hospital market nationally. The MNA disputes that framing and points to Mass General Brigham’s scale — a $15 billion health system — as evidence it can afford to settle.
Timed to an AI forum
The union picked this week deliberately. Mass General Brigham hosted its World Medical Innovation Forum, focused this year on artificial intelligence in health care, at the Westin Seaport on Sept. 22 and 23 — the same two days MNA members and other MGB clinicians picketed outside, arguing the system should be putting that investment into staffing and patient care rather than corporate AI strategy. Gov. Maura Healey, who has publicly urged both sides back to the table, was invited to speak at the forum and declined. Days earlier, the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee passed a resolution backing the Brigham nurses.
An open-ended authorization is a different animal than a one-day strike, and both sides know it. A single day is disruptive and expensive for a hospital, but it’s plannable — you can arrange coverage, reschedule electives, and know exactly when your nurses come back. An indefinite strike removes that certainty entirely, which is exactly why unions save it for when they think management has stopped negotiating in good faith. Whether or not you buy MGB’s $90 million number, walking away from the table in August and staying away through a strike-authorization vote in September is the kind of move that turns a contract dispute into a war of attrition — and those usually end up costing a health system more in reputation and travel-staffing costs than settling would have.