30,000 Nurses Are on Strike: What They Are Fighting For

Right now, 30,000 nurses are on strike. Most are in Southern California. Some are in Northern California and others are in Hawaii. In New York City, nurses at three major hospitals are now past day 25 of their walkout.

The comments are full of people calling these nurses greedy. Those people miss the point. This strike is not mainly about money.

This was first written in February 2026, while the strikes were still going. Pay and benefits change every year, so check current rates in Map My Pay.

Two strikes, two very different setups

We just got back from supporting the nurses in Southern California. A week before that, we were in New York City, right as the strike there was heating up.

What I saw in both places made one thing clear. The system is set up to wear nurses down. But there is a big difference that most people don’t know about.

In California, nurses on strike keep their health and dental insurance. They can’t claim unemployment, but the union gets them ready for months, sometimes a year ahead. Emails go out early telling them to start saving because a strike may be coming.

In New York, nurses on strike lose their health insurance right away.

Let that sink in. A friend of ours in New York and his family are on COBRA now. COBRA for a family of four costs about $3,500 a month.

These nurses might get unemployment of around $869 a week. That is about half their pay, and it’s February. Rent is still due. The hospital bosses know this, and they are waiting for nurses to break.

About those “greedy nurses”

Every time nurses strike, the same comments roll in. People say nurses make good money. They say if it’s so bad, just leave. They ask who will care for patients if nurses walk out.

My answer is simple. No one will care for patients if there are no nurses left. That logic makes my head spin.

If you want to talk about greed, look at the hospitals. They post record profits while they tell nurses there is no budget for safe staffing. Management offered $4,500 a year to cover rising insurance costs, school costs and wages. That’s $2 an hour after taxes.

These nurses aren’t greedy, they’re worn out. They are fighting for conditions that help patients just as much as nurses.

What nurses are striking for

There are four main issues.

1. Safe staffing

This is the big one. A union rep told me she walked onto a unit right before the strike started. Each nurse had 20 patients.

That is not a typo. It is 2026, and nothing has changed.

When I worked in the ER in New York years ago, I thought this would get better. It hasn’t. Hospitals signed past contracts that promised safe nurse-to-patient ratios. They broke those promises, and that is why nurses are striking again.

Travel nurses working the strike are finding out this is not a strike problem. It is normal. One travel nurse got a patient on a vent and a pressor drip on a med-surg floor. That patient belongs in the ICU, or at least step-down. Med-surg nurses aren’t trained to titrate pressors, but that is what they were asked to do.

The travelers think it happens because of the strike. It doesn’t. It happens every day, and it is the reason nurses walked out.

2. Workplace violence

Nurses also deal with violent patients and family members. This is not the odd tough shift. In New York, it is on another level.

There was body cam footage of a patient who locked himself in a room with other patients. Police had to shoot him. That happened in a hospital.

In California, after several shootings during COVID, the hospitals near us put metal detectors at every entrance. Security scans everyone: patients, visitors and staff. If you carry a weapon, they hold it until you leave.

That is not happening everywhere. Nurses in New York want better protection.

3. Health insurance

Nurses want to keep their health insurance without their premiums shooting up.

Think about what happens when a nurse can’t afford to call out sick. They come to work sick and care for sick patients, and the cycle gets worse.

If hospitals keep pushing costs onto nurses, you will see more burnout, more nurses quitting and worse care for patients. This isn’t hard to figure out.

4. Pay that matches the cost of living

People outside New York don’t get this. Most nurses there can’t afford to live in the city they serve.

I talked with nurses who live in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. Some live on Long Island, in Connecticut or even in Pennsylvania. They drive 90 minutes each way because they can’t afford rent any closer.

One nurse told me her total cost of living is $5,500 a month. She shares a one-bedroom with her daughter and her mother. It’s a shoebox, and she is still barely making it.

Meanwhile, hospital bosses drag out the talks on purpose. They know that once February hits, nurses won’t be able to pay rent. They are hoping nurses break before they have to give an inch.

The impasse threat

This part should scare every nurse watching. Hospital management in New York is hinting that they might declare an impasse.

An impasse means they claim both sides bargained in good faith and still can’t agree. If that happens, management can hire temp workers for the long term. The goal is to make them permanent.

By law, they can’t fire you for striking. But once you come back, they can dig through your charts. They can find charting errors, claim you were careless and let you go for “performance issues.”

It is a tactic. It is meant to weaken the union and scare nurses into backing down. If you want to see how one union handled its money during a strike, read about the union that collected $52 million and paid strikers $0.

My take

I’m not on the floor anymore, and this still makes me furious.

These nurses are not asking for too much. They want to do their jobs safely and be safe from violence. They want health insurance they can use. They want to be paid enough to live in the cities they serve.

That’s not greed, it’s basic dignity.

If you are a nurse watching this and wondering if it could happen at your hospital, it can. The best thing you can do is pay attention, write everything down and know your options. The system won’t fix itself.

What you can do

If you’re a nurse:

• Know what you’re worth in other places. Compare take-home pay at MapMyPay.com.
• Talk to your coworkers. You’re not the only one who feels this way.
• Write down your assignments every shift, with patient count, acuity and support staff.
• If your hospital has a union, get involved. If it doesn’t, start asking about one.

If you’re not a nurse:

• Stop calling striking nurses greedy. You don’t know what they’re dealing with.
• Support your local nurses, whether that means showing up to a picket line or just saying thank you.
• Share this with someone who needs to understand what is going on.

For the backstory on the last big California strike, read the Kaiser nurse strike explained.

Written by Jason, RN. I went from $37 an hour in New York to $143 an hour in California and paid off $128K of debt in under a year. I share our numbers in the Nurses to Riches newsletter and on YouTube.