MNA: Boston Medical Center Brighton Nurses Vote to Authorize 3-Day Strike as BMC Seeks to Gut Nurses Benefits and RN Staffing Levels, Undermining the Facility's Ability to Recruit and Retain Staff to Ensure Safe Patient Care

The effort to cut nurses' compensation comes after BMC received hundreds of millions 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 it serves.

BOSTON, Dec. 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Registered nurses at Boston Medical Center (BMC) Brighton (formerly St. Elizabeth's Medical Center), represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), have voted overwhelmingly to authorize their bargaining committee to call a three-day strike if necessary in response to BMC management's demands to cut staffing levels, to gut nurses retirement, healthcare and time off benefits. The benefits cuts will result in the loss of thousands of dollars a year for most nurses while undermining the system's ability to recruit and retain staff to ensure safe patient care.

97% of nurses voting voted to authorize their bargaining committee to schedule a three-day strike if and when they see fit to do so. An overwhelming majority of all nurses at BMC-Brighton took part in the secret ballot vote.

This vote does not mean a strike will definitely occur, and no strike has yet been scheduled. The RN 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 nurses are attempting to negotiate their first contract with BMC Brighton after the system bought the facility from Steward Healthcare, and the State bought the buildings for BMC 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, wages and benefits of staff for the next several years. Now BMC is using the current negotiation to strip nurses of many of their hard-won benefits and safe patient care agreements, including their pension plan. Management also proposed no increases to the wage scales for the first, second and third year of the contract (with the exception of a 1% increase annually to people at the top step of the 19-step wage scale), while also increasing the out-of-pocket costs for health insurance and parking. The result would be a net cut in earnings of thousands of dollars a year for most nurses. 

"This vote sends a clear message that our members are united in our commitment to make a stand for our patients, our community and our professional integrity in the wake of this blatant effort to balance BMC's budget on the backs of those who have the greatest impact on the safety of the patients and the future success of this facility," said Kirsten Ransom, BMC Brighton RN and MNA committee co-chair.

"We have made it clear to BMC management that our members cannot and will not accept any contract that includes a reduction in our current staffing levels or the loss of our benefits, which are key to our ability to retain and recruit the staff we need to meet the mission of this facility," said Kate Cashman, BMC RN and co-chair of the committee. "To do this to our members, who already sacrificed so much during the turmoil of the Steward crisis and stuck with this hospital to ensure the safety of our community just adds further insult to the injury we have already suffered." 

In fact, back in September prior to taking the strike vote and the onset of negotiations for a contract, a delegation of nurses from every unit hand-delivered a petition signed by 80 percent of the nurses (plus about 100 supporters working at BMC Brighton) to the hospital's CEO stating: 

We have been through Hell at St. Elizabeth's / BMC-Brighton. We stood strong in the face of the abuses of Steward combined with the onslaught of the COVID and opioid pandemics, and the deluge from years of taking patient transfers from the Steward hospitals when we had no staffed beds. We have done the impossible for our community. 

We stand behind our MNA bargaining committee in contract negotiations with BMC. We will stand together to bring back affordable, accessible health insurance, competitive wages, and to fight against any efforts to take away benefits, just as we stood up for each other and for our patients against the tides of Cerberus, Steward, catastrophes, with inadequate equipment and supplies, deliberately unsafe staffing and pandemics. 

We will make this the best hospital it can be to practice our professions and to heal our community.

At a recent negotiating session, committee member and substance treatment RN Ellen MacInnis provided a poignant comment distilling members' reaction to management's proposals, stating "When we learned that BMC was going to take over our hospital from Steward, we were thrilled and thought we were finally going to see the light at the end of a long dark tunnel, but since starting this process and seeing what you want to do to us, we now see that light as an oncoming train."

BMC Takeaways Proposed by Management: 

• Staffing: Eliminate charge nurses without assignment: Charge nurses provide a valuable role on all hospital units, coordinating assignment of patients among other staff on the unit, ensuring an efficient flow of patients in and out of the unit, communicating with physicians and others to ensure patients receive the care they need and most importantly, providing an extra pair of hands when a patient crisis occurs. BMC is also proposing to eliminate a resource nurse in the hospital's maternity unit.
  
  
• Pension: The BMC Brighton nurses, as do all MNA-represented nurses 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. The nurses view the pension as vital to the long-term retention of staff and especially important in a female majority workforce. 
  
  
• Cuts to Time Off Benefits: The hospital is seeking to make a significant cuts to the nurses paid time off benefits, including vacation and sick time benefits for both full and part-time nurses, a proposal that represents the loss of thousands of dollars in benefit time. 
  
  
• Increase Health Insurance Costs: BMC wants nurses to accept changes to their health insurance benefits that could result in thousands of dollars of increased health insurance costs for each RN.
  
  
• Wages: At the same time BMC is seeking to cut benefits for nurses, Management 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 nurses at the top step of the 19-step wage scale). The nurses believe the combination of this proposal combined with the benefit cuts will dramatically hamper the facility's ability to recruit and retain nurses in the current competitive market for nurses, which ultimately will impact the safety of their patients. 

BMC Cuts for Nurses Come After Receiving More than $760 Million from the Commonwealth 

In proposing these draconian cuts, BMC executives on the first day of negotiations cited "operating" losses for fiscal 2025. The nurses 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 (now BMC Brighton) and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton (now BMC South). After waiting over a month, BMC shared information that detailed the largesse provided by the state, which included: 

• A guarantee of $510 million in cash over five years of which BMC has already received $337 million in cash, leaving an additional $147 million in cash that BMC will receive. 
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• $140 million for BMC to buy the physical property of Good Samaritan back from the landlord (Apollo Management). The BMC South nurses are also negotiating their contract with BMC South, with similar takeaways demanded by management.
  
  
• A $60 million cash loan (the MNA has asked whether it is no interest but have yet to get a response).
  
  
• The employer declined to provide figures on other sources of income such as grants and contributions.
  
  
• In total BMC has received $716 million 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," Ransom added. 

The MNA represents 650 nurses at BMC Brighton. 100 non-RN healthcare professionals also recently voted to join the union and are bargaining their first contract. Talks for the new contract among RNs began with BMC on Sept. 10, 2025. To date, six sessions have been held with the last two sessions involving a Federal Mediator, at MNA's request. The next negotiation session is scheduled for January 14.

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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.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association