After a bitter months-long stalemate with hospital management, the union that represents 4,000 Brigham and Women’s nurses said Friday that they will go on strike starting Oct. 14. It would be the biggest open-ended walkout by nurses in Massachusetts history.
In contrast to the one-day strike by the Massachusetts Nurses Association at Brigham on July 8, this walkout is slated to be indefinite. That would make it far more disruptive to patients, the hospital, and nurses, who expect to forgo paychecks and lose Brigham’s contribution to their health insurance premiums.
Brigham handles an average of more than 2,000 outpatient visits per day and discharges an average of 130 patients per day, according to Massachusetts Center for Health Information and Analysis data from 2024. Nearly 60,000 patients visited the hospital’s emergency department that year.
The nurses’ dispute is largely over wages, though the union said it is also demanding the new contract provide more affordable health insurance options and limit the hospital’s use of temporary nurses.
A long-lasting strike could wreak havoc at Brigham, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital that attracts patients from around the world, and force its parent corporation, Mass General Brigham, to shell out millions of dollars for fill-in nurses. The strike date announcement came a week after union members voted overwhelmingly to authorize an indefinite walkout.
“We have repeatedly tried to get MGB to negotiate and avoid a second strike, but the billionaires who run MGB have shut the door on us,” said Kelly Morgan, a Brigham labor and delivery charge nurse who heads the union bargaining unit. “There is still time to reach an agreement that protects patient care and respects nurses.”
Brigham said in a statement that it is willing to meet with the MNA if the union is “ready to make meaningful movement toward resolution.” The hospital insisted, however, that the nurses are among the highest paid locally and nationally and that their demands aren’t financially sustainable.
“While we had hoped to avoid another strike, our teams have comprehensive plans in place, informed by our experience” in July “to support continuity of care across Brigham and Women’s Hospital,” the hospital said in a statement.
The union has proposed several phased-in pay increases, while the hospital counters that some nurses already receive step increases based on longevity. Starting salary is $86,700 annually, and nurses with 20 years of service earn $220,000, the top step in the pay scale, according to MGB. As of May, almost one-third were at the top step.
It’s still possible the sides could negotiate a contract agreement that averts the strike. In 2016, the MNA reached an agreement with Brigham the day before what would have been the first nurses strike at a Boston hospital in at least 30 years.
The stakes of this strike would be far greater than those of the walkout in July.
The MNA last authorized an open-ended strike at Tenet Healthcare’s Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester in February 2021. It lasted 301 days and involved about 800 nurses.
Brigham patients and their families are now processing what the strike could mean for their care.
Andrea Edmonston, 55, was on her way to visit her brother at a Brigham cardiac unit when she heard that the hospital’s nurses had set a strike date. Her brother had a major heart surgery and has been hospitalized there for two weeks.
Edmonston, who lives in Norfolk, said she loves the highly specialized nurses who have been caring for her brother. She’s worried that replacement nurses’ unfamiliarity with the hospital could affect his recovery.
“He’s been through hell,” Edmonston said. “I’m concerned because I want him to get the best care, and I know that travelers [nurses] go all over the country, from hospital to hospital.”
Brigham delivered more than 7,200 babies in 2025, according to a survey by the hospital watchdog The Leapfrog Group. (About 68,055 babies were born in Massachusetts from July 2024 to July 2025.)
Tahrae Jarrett, 29, who is due to give birth to a baby boy this month, has been receiving prenatal care at Brigham for several months. She and her husband, Nirael Davis, 30, visited the hospital on Friday and said they were nervous about the potential strike.
“I was like, ‘This is going to happen while I’m having the baby,’” said Jarrett, who lives in Dorchester.
Davis seemed sympathetic to the nurses. “Hopefully, they get what they’re looking for … and hopefully it doesn’t affect the public too much,” he said.
Brigham representatives said they were confident that care would remain top notch throughout the strike. MGB said it has been in touch with US Nursing, the company that supplied 1,300 temporary nurses in July, and most of those nurses have agreed to return to Brigham.
After the one-day strike ended, the hospital locked out unionized nurses for four days because management said it had to provide five days of work for the temporary nurses.
“While the hospital does not want a strike, we are fully prepared to manage through one, regardless of its duration,” MGB spokesperson Jessica Pastore said this week.
During the July work stoppage, MGB said, operating rooms continued at a busy pace and the hospital performed a successful heart transplant.
Union leaders said they hoped to avoid an indefinite strike but needed to stand up to the corporation.
“We’re not taking this lightly, but we’re at a point where the hospital wants to break our union,” Morgan said Tuesday. “All they have to do is sit down at the table and have an open and meaningful dialogue, and we could get an agreement.”
MGB counters that it has held at least 25 bargaining sessions with the union since November and that it informed the MNA at a session on Aug. 11 that the sides are at an impasse.
Higher wages are central to the dispute. The union wants a 3 percent raise for the first six months and a 4 percent raise for the next 12 months of the contract. The hospital isn’t offering any new across-the-board raise, but notes that nurses already receive a 5 percent “step” pay increase for each year of service until they reach two decades.
Over the past five fiscal years, Brigham said, nurses’ base wages have increased by an average of 55 percent.
Brigham nurses say the across-the-board raise is crucial because of inflation and the high cost of living in Greater Boston, and to retain highly trained employees. They noted that Dr. Anne Klibanski, MGB’s chief executive, received a 9 percent raise in 2024, for a salary of nearly $9.2 million. And MGB ended fiscal 2025 with a total surplus of $2.3 billion.
David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group, a Boston management consulting firm, said a strike isn’t always financially disastrous for a hospital — and the public may be surprised to learn how well the nurses are paid.
“Replacement nurses are expensive but may not be more expensive than Brigham’s permanent staff,” he said. “MGB is betting it can absorb the pain longer than the nurses can go without paychecks.”
Joe Markman, an MNA spokesperson, said the union can help nurses financially during a prolonged strike. The MNA has a strike fund to assist eligible nurses, he said.
The union is also advising nurses what to do if the hospital stops contributing to their health insurance premiums, including going on COBRA, which lets people continue workplace health coverage for up to 18 months, getting on a spouse’s health insurance, or applying to the Massachusetts Health Connector.
Brigham is not the only Boston hospital facing labor strife. In September, Boston Medical Center nurses voted to authorize a three-day strike over pay and staffing concerns. They have not set a date for a walkout.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com. Marin Wolf can be reached at marin.wolf@globe.com.