GRAND BLANC, Mich.—For over two months, the picket lines outside Henry Ford Genesys Hospital have been a frontline in the class struggle gripping the healthcare industry in America. Over 700 nurses and case workers, represented by Teamsters Local 332, have been on an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike since Labor Day, September 1. They are defying a healthcare giant that prioritizes dollars over its own patients and staff.
The strike launched with a 93% mandate from the workers and is “a fight for the soul of the hospital,” nurses said. They are demanding a new contract that ensures safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, competitive wages, and the preservation of longstanding benefits. Their struggle echoes a national wave of labor militancy in healthcare, seen in the most recent strike of 46,000 Kaiser Permanente workers on the West Coast.
“Henry Ford Genesys has hit a new low by forcing 750 Teamsters out on strike,” said Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien during a recent visit to the picket line. “These nurses and case workers are asking for nothing more than respect and common-sense protections that put patient safety at the forefront.”
The hospital’s management, however, has chosen conflict over compromise. Instead of negotiating in good faith, the union said that Henry Ford Health has engaged in a campaign of union-busting, spending vast sums to hire scab replacement nurses for over $100 an hour while pleading they’re “broke” at the bargaining table.
“It’s disappointing that Henry Ford Genesys continues to spend their money and energy on union busting and replacement nurses instead of simply offering their own workers a fair agreement,” said Dan Glass, President of Local 332.
The company’s claim of financial hardship is sharply contradicted by its own reporting. The non-profit hospital reported an operating income of $294.2 million in 2024, a staggering increase from $80.5 million in 2023. Glass has labeled management’s claims of being broke “patently false,” noting that the current Henry Ford leadership, which took over from Ascension in October 2024, is not responsible for past deficits and is now attempting to impose harsh concessions.
“They want to double some of our insurance rates, they want some of our overtime and take away other premium things that we’ve had forever,” Glass explained. “What does that do? That does not recruit, that does not retain employees, which equals less staffing. This all rolls back into exactly why we’re out here: if we can’t staff the hospital, we can’t serve the community.”
For the nurses on the line, the fight is intensely personal and professional. They described the impossible conditions created by chronic understaffing, where patient safety is compromised and their own licenses are put at risk.
“I am deeply frustrated that Henry Ford Genesys has been taking so long to address our concerns at the bargaining table. A commitment to safe staffing ratios is not negotiable, they’re essential for protecting our patients,” said Carolyn Clemons, a Teamsters nurse at the hospital.
Another nurse on the picket line said she often has to choose which patients get her immediate attention. “That is the worst feeling in the world,” she said.
The strike exposes the fundamental contradiction of healthcare under capitalism—the struggle between the drive for ever-higher profits and the human need for quality care. Though Genesys is technically a non-profit, it’s part of the same system as the corporate hospitals and must play by the same rules: generate massive financial surpluses or lose out in the competitive healthcare marketplace.
This means its management behaves like the bosses at any other company. But healthcare workers across the country are fighting back against the cost-cutting logic of the capitalist, for-profit healthcare system.
“We are not going to give up on this,” Glass said. “That’s what the hospital wants out of us. They want to keep holding us out and thinking the members are going to lose hope, and they’re not going to.”
The Henry Ford nurses’ strike is a testament to the growing recognition among workers that only through collective, militant action can they defend their rights, their patients, and their communities from the relentless greed of the billionaires and the capitalist class.
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