Earlier this year, we covered the “resolution” of the biggest nursing strike in New York history, which ended with no meaningful results for workers. The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) had demanded that base nursing salaries be raised to $220,000 from the then-average of $160,000. After a month without paychecks, 15,000 nurses returned to work with many feeling financially drained and “betrayed” by the union. Their new contract included 12% raises spread over three years, which was a step backward from the 2023 contract, which resulted in 18% raises.
That walkout provided a lesson in false union promises and what can realistically be achieved at the bargaining table. Now, another high-profile nursing strike has concluded after 411 days at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Michigan, where the Teamsters played dirty but didn’t seem to have achieved anything that the employer hadn’t already offered.
Over a hundred bargaining sessions, to what end?
The strike officially ended on Oct. 16 with Henry Ford Genesys nurses ratifying a new contract. The Teamsters seem unusually muted on this subject, and the international ”newsroom” page did not post a blustery announcement typical of what it issues after a strike ends. Instead, Local 332’s Facebook page simply displayed an “our fight continues” sentiment while showing the tally of the 260-165 ratification vote. Local 332 President Dan Glass declared in a statement, “It was clear that the parties were not going to reach a mutual agreement on some of the core issues that remained” after more than 100 bargaining sessions.
The union left out specifics, but Henry Ford Genesys’ statement filled in a few blanks. The sides “will meet to negotiate terms of striking members’ return to work.” Also, this ratified deal “is consistent with the employment terms the hospital has implemented for nurses over the past year.”
That sentence is a telling one. This new deal increases RN wages by 13%, which, yes, does sound “consistent” with what Henry Ford Genesys already implemented early this year by increasing RN wages 13% to bring the system’s average annual RN salaries to around $100,000. That boost took Henry Ford Genesys nurses beyond the Michigan market, where salaries land in the “$85,000 – $95,000” range for RNs with 5+ years of experience.
Also consistent with a previous Henry Ford Genesys offer: the new contract includes premium pay rates for weekend, critical, and off-shift work along with seniority provisions. So what, exactly, have the nurses gained from the Teamsters dragging this strike out? We’re hearing nothing yet.
Beyond wages, what the Teamsters demanded
The largest sticking point was coming to a return-to-work agreement. In March, the Teamsters rejected an employer offer while pushing for a deal that would require Henry Ford Genesys to bump out nurses who continued working during the strike or were hired as replacements. Now, the union’s new contract sets aside return-to-work terms for future negotiations. The Teamsters ended their strike without resolving one of their main demands.
Another sticking point goes back to the previous contract. In Oct. 2024, Henry Ford Health took over operations of Genesys Hospital from Ascension. In the process, Henry Ford Health inherited the Teamsters’ contract that expired in Aug. 2025. The union was fighting to keep a certain clause, and Henry Ford Genesys revealed that the union manipulated this clause that “incentivize[d] coordinated call-outs” by boosting pay for nurses who worked during heightened absenteeism.
As the hospital reported, the Teamsters directed members to “take turns calling off scheduled shifts,” and this led to members calling out of work “5,872 times between January and August 2025,” averaging 25 absences per day at Genesys, which was “the equivalent of an entire unit of staff.” In effect, the union was purposefully causing staffing shortages.
And what about those decertification petitions?
Just a hunch here, but the Teamsters could have thrown in the towel out of fear that nurses could give them the boot.
The union concluded this strike a few weeks after a second decertification (RD) petition was filed involving a unit of 385 RNs including replacement nurses. The National Right to Work (NRTW) Legal Defense Foundation is providing legal aid to the petition-filing nurse and to nurses who filed ULPs against the union for retaliation.
The NRTW Foundation characterized this as an economic strike, and that label affects voting eligibility under the NLRA. Economic strikers who are permanently replaced can only vote in RD elections held within 12 months of a strike beginning (and this one began on Sept. 1, 2025). So, an unanswered issue is which nurses (replacements and/or original employees) can vote on whether to remove the Teamsters.
The 385-nurse petition followed another RD petition for a unit of 80 nurses including replacements. Those petitions have not been withdrawn as of this writing. We also don’t know whether the replacement nurses will stay or go.
Fallout beyond this strike
More threads remain open beyond the Henry Ford Genesys homebase. This drawn-out strike involved a contract that a new operator inherited, and conflicts like this one could become vehicles for overturning the contract bar, which remains vulnerable after Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. v. NLRB saw the successor bar fall.
And these unimpressive Teamsters strike results won’t help their quest to mass-organize Michigan nurses. Back in March, Michigan Teamsters President Kevin Moore boasted, “You think we’re just done with Henry Ford? …You think there’s not more hospitals in the State of Michigan that want Teamster help? We’re not backing up from any hospital.”
Well, some Michigan nurses, guessing from those decertification petitions, could be backing away from the Teamsters.
