MNA: Boston Medical Center South Nurses and Healthcare Professionals Vote to Authorize a 3-Day Strike as BMC Seeks to Gut Benefits and Cut Staffing Levels, Undermining the Facility’s Ability to Recruit and Retain Staff to Ensure Safe Patient Care

The vote follows a vote in December at BMC Brighton over similar Issues

The effort to cut compensation comes after BMC received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Commonwealth to operate the hospital, formerly owned by Steward Healthcare, and after healthcare workers stuck with the facility to ensure its survival to protect the community

BROCKTON, Mass., Feb. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Registered nurses and healthcare professionals at Boston Medical Center (BMC) South (formerly Good Samaritan Medical Center), represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), have voted overwhelmingly to authorize their bargaining committee to call a three-day strike in response to BMC executives’ demands to cut staffing levels, to gut retirement, healthcare and time off benefits. The benefits cuts will result in the loss of thousands of dollars a year for most nurses and healthcare professionals, while undermining the hospital’s ability to recruit and retain staff to ensure safe patient care. Staff are also protesting bad faith bargaining, and attorneys for the MNA have filed charges against BMC for bargaining in bad faith by implementing further health insurance cuts and cost increases without negotiating, as well as for discriminating against unionized staff.

99% of the staff voting voted to authorize their bargaining committee to schedule a three-day strike, with 96% of the facility’s eligible RNs and healthcare professionals taking part in the secret ballot vote. Voters included the hospital’s pharmacists, social workers, physical therapists, substance abuse counselors, lab scientists, RNs, occupational therapists and speech pathologists, all of whom are members of the MNA.

This vote does not mean a strike will definitely occur, and no strike has yet been scheduled. The MNA bargaining committee will determine if and when to set a strike date depending on how BMC conducts itself in upcoming negotiations. Before any strike takes place, the Union would provide the hospital with the legally required 10-day notice.

The vote follows an earlier vote by the nurses at the BMC Brighton campus, the other former Steward facility taken over by BMC (historically known as St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center), where nurses and healthcare professionals are confronting many of the same reductions. 

The MNA members are attempting to negotiate their first contract with BMC South after the system bought the facility from Steward Healthcare, following its filing of bankruptcy and its exodus from the Commonwealth. The process included the state’s provision of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and loans to BMC to support operations, the purchase of the building, wages and benefits of staff for the next several years. Now BMC is using the current negotiation to strip healthcare providers of many of their hard-won benefits and safe patient care agreements, elimination of their pension plan for many current and all future employees, as well as dramatic cuts to paid time off. Management also proposed freezing wage scales for three years (with the exception of a 1% increase annually to people at the top step of each of the different job types wage scales), while also dramatically increasing the out-of-pocket costs for health insurance. The benefit cuts would represent the loss of thousands of dollars of annual wages for the overwhelming majority of RNs and healthcare professionals.

“When BMC management chooses cuts over care, we choose to stand together. Today’s strike vote makes it clear: we will not allow BMC’s hardline positions to compromise patient safety or disrespect the hard work staff perform every day–the same staff who have stuck with this organization through thick and thin,” said Maureen Healy, RN, a long-time RN at BMC South and co-chair of the local bargaining unit with the MNA. “And worse, they imposed health insurance cuts for hospital workers before bargaining over them”.

“We did not vote to strike for ourselves alone—we voted to protect our patients and our co-workers,” added committee co-chair Liz Erwin, RN. “Cutting staffing and benefits undermines patient safety, drives staff away from the bedside which prevents us from providing the care our communities rely on. With this vote, our members are saying enough is enough.” 

Says Irwin, “We are also standing in solidarity with co-workers at BMC South, along with thousands throughout the BMC system represented by other unions who are facing similar issues. We are committed to defending each other as we defend our patients.” 

The cuts proposed by BMC follow years of sacrifice by all BMC South staff members to protect their community following the collapse of the Steward Healthcare system, as well as the closure of Norwood Hospital due to a flood in 2022 and the closure of Brockton Hospital after the fire back in 2023. These calamities resulted in the dedicated staff holding the line as more patients flooded their already understaffed emergency department, while staff struggled every day to keep their patients safe under the worst conditions. Now, under new owners, the staff hoped conditions would improve, but they haven’t as BMC repeatedly fails to meet contractual staffing grids previously agreed to.

Taking a strike vote is just the latest in a series of efforts the nurses have made to convince BMC to treat them with respect. In fact, back in September prior to the onset of negotiations for a contract, a delegation of staff from every unit hand-delivered a petition signed by 80 percent of MNA members and many other supporting staff to the hospital’s CEO stating: 

“As members, we stand strong behind our MNA bargaining committee in contract negotiations with BMC. Just as we stood up for each other and for our patients against the tides of Cerberus, Steward, fires, floods and pandemics, we will join together to bring back affordable, accessible health insurance, maintain proper staffing in all areas, safeguard patient ratios, and fight against any efforts to take away our wages and benefits….We will make this the best hospital it can be to practice our professions and to heal our community.”

BMC Takeaways Proposed by Management: 

• Staffing: BMC is also proposing to cut its clinical pharmacist staff on both the day and night shifts. On Jan. 8th more than 300 staff members, including many MDs, presented a petition opposing the administration’s proposed cuts to clinical pharmacist staffing,

  They also proposed to delete all commitments as to staffing levels in the Interventional Radiology Department. Management also demands to essentially eliminate the role of Resource Nurses, by turning them into all-purpose floating RNs to fill in for management’s ongoing short staffing. Currently, the Resource Nurses are selected among highly skilled nurses to aid staff in the most complex cases in the telemetry and medical surgical units.

• Pension: The BMC South nurses, as do all MNA-represented staff at former Steward-owned facilities, have access to the MNA’s multi-employer, defined benefit pension plan. Management has proposed to eliminate it for all who are not yet participants which would mean eliminating it for many current and all future RNs and healthcare professionals. The staff view the pension as vital to the long-term retention and especially important in a female majority workforce.
• Increase Health Insurance Costs: BMC wants staff to accept changes to their health insurance benefits that have already resulted in thousands of dollars of increased health insurance costs. Management already implemented the changes without negotiating them, and attorneys for the MNA have filed charges against BMC South and BMC Brighton, asserting that this is an obvious violation of federal labor law. At issue is also the great lack of available physicians and other providers covered in the area under the BMC health plans. Many caregivers report the inability to get appointments for themselves or their children for months, or to find a provider at all.
• Cuts to Vacation and Sick Time Benefits: The hospital is seeking to significantly cut the number of paid time off hours staff can have before management cuts off their accruals. The effect in an understaffed hospital is that staff cannot take vacation time, and so their time piles up, and now management is proposing to stop accruals at fewer hours – causing dedicated staff who don’t or can’t take time away to take an effective pay cut. Executives also proposed to dramatically cut the rate of PTO accruals for all future hires—an effective cut of thousands of dollars for many on top of the thousands of dollars of increased health costs shifted onto the workers:
• Wages: At the same time BMC is seeking to cut benefits, executives also proposed 0% increases to the wage scales every year for the next three years (with the exception of a 1% increase annually only for those at the top step of the wage scales). The staff believe the combination of this proposal combined with the benefit cuts will dramatically hamper the facility’s ability to recruit and retain workers in the current competitive market , which ultimately will impact the safety of their patients.
• Discrimination for union membership: Attorneys for the MNA have also filed federal charges against BMC-South for denying union members bonus pay that they offer only to non-union staff members doing the very same jobs and working the same shifts.

BMC Cuts Come After Receiving Hundreds of Millions from the Commonwealth 

In proposing these cuts, BMC executives on the first day of negotiations cited “operating” losses for fiscal 2025. The MNA negotiating team then asked BMC what non-operating revenue the state gave the corporation to cover costs for taking over St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton. After waiting over a month, BMC shared information that detailed funding provided by the state in addition to regular payments to BMC, which included:

• A guarantee of $387 million in cash over five years.
• The state itself also paid $66 million for the St. Elizabeth’s property to the previous owner, (Apollo Management) and handed the property to BMC free of payment or rent. 
• Included within the above $337 million was $140 million for BMC to buy the physical property of Good Samaritan back from the landlord (Apollo Management).
• A $60 million interest free cash loan.
• The employer declined to provide figures on other sources of income such as grants and contributions. 
• In total BMC has received hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and property plus a $60 million loan while seeking even more from the frontline staff. This is all in addition to ongoing government payments to BMC. 

“One thing we know: The legislature and the governor did not give all this money to BMC to finance their purchase of BMC Brighton and BMC South so that they would turn around and take thousands of dollars a year away from the dedicated hospital workers who have kept these two hospitals and our communities alive,” said Kirsten Ransom, RN, the MNA co-chair at the sister BMC-Brighton hospital.

The MNA represents more than 480 nurses and healthcare professionals at BMC South. Talks for the new contract began with BMC on October 15, 2025.

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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 26,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association