Thousands of Brigham and Women’s Hospital nurses walk out, starting the state’s largest-ever nurses strike

The Boston Globe – Wednesday, July 8, 2026
By Marin Wolf and Jonathan Saltzman

Thousands of Brigham nurses and supporters poured onto Francis Street near the hospital Wednesday morning, shaking cowbells, banging on plastic buckets and cheering at a deafening chorus of supportive honks from passing cars. The nurses, sporting black or white “Union Strong” and “Brigham Nurses United” t-shirts, waved picket signs calling out the management of the state’s largest health care system.

“Value Nurses Like You Value Your Bonu$e$,” one sign read.

Another featured a photograph of Mass General Brigham Chief Executive Officer Anne Klibanski with a mustache and scar drawn on her face. The sign said “MGB CEO Anne Klibanski $8.6 million pay. Brigham Nurses 0%.”

About 4,000 Brigham nurses walked off the job for one day as they fight with MGB over pay increases and insurance costs. The Brigham, a nationally renowned Harvard teaching hospital, and MGB have have unsuccessfully been negotiating a new contract for months. A separate group of 450 clinicians who visit patients at their homes under MGB Home Care also went on strike Wednesday, for seven days.

Despite the short duration of the nurses strike, participants will be locked out of the hospital until July 13. Brigham, one of MGB’s two flagship hospitals, is contractually obligated to provide temporary nurses with five days of work, MGB told staff.

“Our highest priority is the safety and well-being of our patients,” the health system said in a statement. “Brigham and Women’s Hospital remains open and fully operational, and patients should continue to come to scheduled appointments unless they hear directly from their care team.”

MGB has said the nurses’ demands are not “financially sustainable and not supported by the current labor market.”

MGB representatives said they have secured nearly 1,300 temporary nurses to keep the hospital running as normal. But the transition to those temporary nurses Wednesday morning was anything but smooth, striking nurses said.

Kelly Morgan, a Brigham nurse and head of the union chapter, said that hospital management kept union nurses beyond scheduled shifts as the strike began in several units, including the neonatal intensive care unit and the cardiac catheterization lab, because they didn’t have enough replacements.

Morgan said MGB leaders refused to negotiate with the union Monday during a meeting at Governor Maura Healey’s office because the system was “completely confident that you had enough replacement nurses to adequately care for our patients.“

“Clearly they don’t if they weren’t letting people leave,” Morgan said.

In a statement released just before 10 a.m., MGB said that all agency nurses were fully integrated into patient care and disputed reports that the temporary staff weren’t in place in time for the neonatal intensive care unit’s shift change.

Several patients said they were disappointed that MGB didn’t tell them sooner about the strike and what to expect.

Destiny Cosby, a 23-year-old military spouse from Boston, has been with her son at the Brigham for 70 days since he was born prematurely. She said hospital leaders didn’t speak with her about the strike until Tuesday.

“Prior to this, management didn’t tell me. I had to learn from the news,” Cosby said.

Ben Mays, a 38-year-old man from East Boston who works in public policy, said that his wife chose to deliver their first child at the Brigham because, “it is quite possibly the best facility in the world for delivering a baby.”

Mays said he was shocked at how little information he and his family, who are still at the hospital recovering, received in the days leading up to the walkout.

“If I ran an organization, the number one thing I would be thinking about … is you would do very clear communication in advance,” Mays said. “It seems like the leadership here is almost embarrassed to talk to patients and communicate what’s going on.”

In a news release Wednesday, MGB said it had notified patients about the strike through flyers on meal trays, messages on TVs, and signs.

“We understand how stressful this moment is for patients,” MGB said, adding that’s why it has activated its thorough plans for emergencies “to ensure that patients continue to receive high-quality, safe care.”

Several nurses said they believe MGB’s goal is to break the nurses’ union at the Brigham to bring it in line with MGH, whose nurses aren’t unionized.

“We have a lot of protections under the union that Mass General nurses don’t have and because they’re merging, they want to break our union,” said Heather Marty, 32, a nurse in the Brigham’s cardiac intensive care unit, who carried a sign that said, “Union busting is disgusting.”

Standing outside the entrance to the hospital after a chemotherapy treatment for cancer, Joan Fuller, 87, of Norwell took the side of the nurses. A retired Boston Children’s Hospital nurse herself, Fuller said she understands the nurses’ jobs and believes their demands must be legitimate.

“If they say they need it, they need it,” she said.

In a joint statement Tuesday, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Representatives Stephen Lynch and Ayanna Pressley urged both sides to continue negotiating.

“Nurses are the backbone of our health care system, and we rely on their skills, compassion, and tireless work ethic to care for our loved ones,” the statement said, adding that the Brigham nurses and MGB Home Care workers “deserve a fair contract that reflects the essential contributions they make each and every day.”

Warren joined the nurses at the picket line on Francis Street and handed out doughnuts.

The sides are particularly far apart on wages. 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. Management points out nurses already receive a 5 percent raise on the yearly anniversary of their hiring — a so-called step increase — until they reach two decades of service, which helps make Brigham nurses among the highest paid in the state.

Brigham nurses start at $86,700 annually, and those with two decades of service earn at least $220,000, according to documents shared by MGB. Nearly one-third of the union, or 1,322 nurses, earn that maximum amount, MGB said.

For health insurance, management wants nurses who are enrolled in Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan, which is more than half of the membership, to pay 2.5 percentage points more of their monthly premium.

At the picket line, several non-unionized physician assistants stood nearby and cheered the striking nurses.

“Nurses are the foundation of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and we could not do our job safely or well if they weren’t part of our patients’ care team,” said Elyse Doherty, chief neurology physician assistant, who has been a PA at Brigham for 10 years.

Doherty said it’s “really sad” that management has refused to give the nurses a cost-of-living increase in addition to their 5 percent annual step increase.

“To not be given any cost-of-living increase is insulting for all of the work that they do,” Doherty, 35, said. “They come in day in and day out and literally deal with patients and their families on the worst day of their lives, more so than even the providers do.”

She added that it’s true that some veteran nurses might earn more than new doctors, but that makes sense to her. “Someone that has been here 30 years, dedicating their entire life to this profession, should be making that much money,” she said of nurses at the top step who make over $200,000 a year.

MGB Home Care clinicians are also seeking caseload limits and clearer productivity standards.

Although the union has said the cost of living increase and health insurance contributions are the sticking points, several nurses said money isn’t the big issue.

“We don’t have adequate staffing and we have difficulty on a good day retaining staffing,” said Kathryn Julien, who works in the Center for Women and Newborns. “It’s also respect. We’re not respected. I personally don’t do my job for the paycheck. I connect with patients.”

MGB spokesperson Jessica Pastore said that disruptions to care will be minimal, although some patients will have to reschedule appointments or be seen at another MGB location.

The health system’s surgical center in Foxborough will be closed Wednesday to Friday. MGB Home Care is pausing new referrals and some social work and dietitian visits.

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