This past year has seen multiple high-profile nursing walkouts, including a New York strike that was costly for workers and the hospitals involved. The Teamsters have drawn out Michigan’s Henry Ford Genesys Hospital strike, which is approaching the one-year mark, and a sizable walkout recently took place in Pennsylvania and isn’t receiving national attention.
A five-day strike by 900+ Service Employees International Union (SEIU) members ended on Aug. 1 at Mount Nittany Medical Center in Centre County, PA. These registered nurses, techs, and respiratory therapists not only returned to work without a new contract, but they walked into a particularly combative aftermath.
A Rare Strike for a Hospital Already being Hit Hard
This was the healthcare system’s first strike in over 20 years, and in a statement, Mount Nittany disclosed that their Fiscal Year 2026 financial results revealed the system’s “first operating loss in more than a decade.” The hospital cited “the cost of the five-day strike” as one contributing factor in a larger picture that “changed our financial outlook and required us to reassess what we can responsibly sustain in a labor agreement” while continuing to serve the community.
What happened to change the situation? In addition to strike costs (explained below), the hospital lost their “Sole Community Hospital” Medicare designation, which has led to reimbursement struggles that have put over a dozen hospitals in jeopardy of closure across Pennsylvania. Further, the hospital confirmed the union’s claims that replacement workers cost at least $6 million over the course of the strike.
Union Math Doesn’t Make Sense
The costs of the strike contributed to Mount Nittany’s financial strain, and the employer reduced what they were offering union members prior to the strike. The proposed wage boost went from 3%/2%/2% to a flat 2%/2%/2% in a three-year contract, meaning that workers not only lost earnings during the strike, but lost the benefit of the previously offered bargain.
Predictably, the union responded with an unsupportable claim. They insisted that the hospital could have given the striking workers 8% raises rather than spend that $6 million on temporary replacements. An SEIU member spoke with the local CBS affiliate and claimed, “Doing the math shocked me.” She added, “Mount Nittany could have chosen to give us a wage increase that keeps up with inflation this year, and they still would have had half of the money that they spent on temporary workers left over.”
The above quote bypasses an issue illustrated by the strike, which is that temporary healthcare workers are very expensive:
- Pricey, yes: The “out-of-state temporary” workers typically hired for healthcare strikes are contracted by agencies for a minimum number of days to make their travel worthwhile. On top of agency fees, these workers receive premium rates to account for lodging, travel, food, and for relocating on short notice.
- A one-time vs. long-term cost: The union does not acknowledge that wage boosts are an ongoing and recurring cost, versus the isolated cost of a 5-day strike. Giving workers an 8% raise is certainly something that employers would love to do if that were sustainable, which Mount Nittany is clearly pointing out is not the case.
Clearly, what happened here isn’t great for workers, but the unfortunate reality is that the hospital system then experienced circumstances that changed what was sustainable to offer, and the original offer had not been ratified. And as mentioned above, Mount Nittany pointed toward multiple contributing factors, including an indisputably expensive strike, for their changed situation.
Tough for Workers, and Tough for the Employer
Mount Nittany is sitting in an unenviable spot. What isn’t up for debate is how hospitals serving rural patients in Pennsylvania are increasingly struggling due to reimbursement cuts. Mount Nittany is not, per se, a “rural” system, but they serve a large percentage of rural patients, and the system recently lost that important Medicare designation, which has hurt their bottom line in an age where everything costs more.
The war of words will surely continue, since the union is claiming that the hospital is withholding raises as a bargaining chip. Mount Nittany has explained that they simply cannot sustain their previous offer, and SEIU’s response claim is a soundbite that doesn’t provide the full picture. Meanwhile, the strike that workers hoped would end in a higher offer instead became a factor that chipped away at what was sitting on the table.
