Here are 12 updates on unionization efforts and other labor organizing among clinicians and hospitals and health systems in July, as reported by Becker’s:
1. About 10,000 registered nurses represented by Teamsters Local 2024 reached a tentative agreement with Corewell Health East on its first contract. The agreement was reached after more than a year of bargaining, and the union represents nurses at nine Corewell Health hospitals and campuses in southeast Michigan. The system is dually headquartered in Grand Rapids and Southfield, Mich.
2. Attending physicians across the University of California system are moving to form a union with SEIU Doctors United, in what the union describes as the largest unionization effort of attending physicians in the United States.
3. About 500 employees at Merrimack Health Lawrence (Mass.) Hospital joined 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. The employees include nurse’s aides, phlebotomists, housekeepers, transport workers, pharmacy technicians and radiology aides.
4. Members of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania at Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College, Pa., began a five-day strike July 27, the union’s first since 2004.
5. The National Labor Relations Board overruled the objections of St. Louis-based SSM Health seeking to overturn a union election in which registered nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis., voted June 11 to join SEIU Wisconsin. The NLRB’s decision came July 22, more than a month after the health system filed its objections on June 18.
6. Members of the Committee of Interns and Residents, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, reached a tentative agreement July 15 with the University of California covering approximately 6,400 interns, residents and fellows across the UC Health system.
7. Employees of Sterling, Ill.-based CGH Medical Center ratified their first union contract July 13-15 after five years of negotiations with hospital management.
8. More than 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and about 450 clinicians at Mass General Brigham Home Care, both represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, ended overlapping strikes July 13 and July 15, respectively. The actions centered on wages, staffing and, for home care clinicians, caseloads and productivity standards after more than a year of bargaining.
9. Sixty-five hospice nurses at Minneapolis-based Allina Health, represented by SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, held a one-day unfair labor practice strike July 6 outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital and Allina Health’s corporate headquarters. The action came after nearly a year of negotiations for a first union contract.
10. Skilled maintenance workers employed by MedSpace Services canceled their planned July 2 strike at six Illinois hospitals owned by Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare after reaching new collective bargaining agreements.
11. Nearly 1,800 nurses represented by National Nurses United held one-day strikes July 6 at three Ascension hospitals: Via Christi St. Francis and St. Joseph in Wichita, Kan., and St. Agnes in Baltimore. Nurses at the two Wichita hospitals had been negotiating a new contract since March, while St. Agnes nurses have been bargaining for a first contract since January 2024 and had previously struck in July 2025.
12. About 178 registered nurses at MyMichigan Medical Center Alma, represented by the Michigan Nurses Association, held a three-day strike July 3-6. The nurses’ contract had expired in February, and the hospital’s final offer included no raise in the first year and 1% increases in each of the following two years.
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