As negotiations between Keck Medicine of USC and the California Nurses Association reached a week-long standstill, the union submitted a strike, which began on Thursday and is slated to last until Feb. 26. The strike affects Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center. According to a statement from Keck Medicine of USC, both locations will remain “open and fully staffed” during the strike.

The strike comes after Keck Medicine restructured employees’ healthcare plans for employees to an exclusive provider organization that would allow them to only seek care from USC-affiliated physicians, according to Kerri Dodgens, chief nurse representative on the CNA bargaining team.

Hundreds of nurses gathered outside Keck Hospital with signs and speakers to begin the strike Thursday morning. Gina Vergara, a nurse in the heart and lung transplant intensive care unit, said Keck is using employees’ healthcare as a “bargaining chip.”

“They are forcing University employees, along with nurses, into an insurance system that is already overloaded,” Vergara said. “Now patients are going to have a more difficult time making appointments and seeing their providers. … We’re fighting [to make] sure that we can protect our patients.”

In a statement from Keck Medicine of USC, it wrote that it was “disappointed” by the nurses’ decision to strike after reaching a tentative agreement that included wage increases, a no-premium health plan for nurses and more resource nurses.

However, the agreement was not ratified, and nurses have criticized the proposed insurance plan and said USC lacks effective staffing support. In a letter to the editor, Laila Al-Marayati, the former chief of the Division of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Gynecologic Sub-Specialties at the Keck School of Medicine, wrote that Keck lacks enough obstetric and gynecologic providers to meet community needs.

Dodgens, a registered nurse at Keck Hospital, said that changes to benefits are making competing hospitals more attractive.

“If they want to keep and attract new world-class nurses — [which] they say that we are — they need to offer us a contract that reflects that and that our nurses will ratify,” Dodgens said.

The union previously went on strike in October over resource nurses — nurses not assigned to specific patients who can fill in staffing gaps and allow meal breaks. In 2024, Keck nurses missed an accumulated 10,000 meal breaks according to Vergara and National Nurses United, which the Hospital  paid penalty fees for.

Valerie Hernandez, a telemetry nurse, said the current strike was meant to improve patient care.

“I know a lot of the community sometimes gets confused with their nurses standing out on the picket line,” Hernandez said. “What that means [is] we’re fighting for their safety, for the future as well.”

Dodgens also said they are fighting to protect provisions renewed in their contracts, including an attendance policy that only allowed for 96 hours off per year.

“As someone who works 12-hour shifts, you can do the math,” Dodgens said. “That’s not very many days and so we fought hard.”

Dodgens said Keck’s strong reputation for specialized care was built by experienced nurses who may leave without stronger contracts. 

“We do surgeries that no other doctor will do,” Dodgens said. “It’s concerning to me to see the watering down of our benefits and contract that could lead to the very skilled nurses that we have working, taking care of all these people, leaving. … You can’t staff a hospital with all new grads. That’s not safe.”

Rudy Cuellar, a cardiothoracic ICU nurse lead, said he believes management must take responsibility for negotiations. He said there was a correlation between the number of strikes they’ve had since Adam Abrahms was chosen to legally represent Keck Hospital.

“[Abrahms is] ruthless, and he doesn’t seem to care about our nurses and our patients,” Cuellar said. “But I’m not sure that it is exactly the attorney’s fault. I think it is up to upper management to recognize that we need to take care of the nurses and maintain the safety of the patients.”

Hernandez said she hopes the Hospital can see that its nurses care about their patients, and that they can meet at the bargaining table soon.

“We don’t want to strike,” Hernandez said. “We don’t want to be out here. We want to be in there, taking care of our patients.”