“When staff nurse Mary Havlicek Cornacchia reported to TuftsMedical Center at 7 a.m. on July 12, it was not for the early morning shift. Rather, Cornacchia, along with nearly 1,200 of the Tufts Medical Center nursing staff, was joined by community members in what would be the first nurses’ strike in the city of Boston in over 30 years, and the largest nurses’ strike to ever occur in the state, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the union representing the Tufts nurses. 

The strike came after the nurses attempted to parse out the details of their contract with Tufts Medical Center and make addendums to the existing agreement.

‘Staffing, wages and our retirement plans are the three big sticking points,’ Cornacchia, who is also the co-chair of the MNA bargaining unit at Tufts Medical Center, explained.

According to David Schildmeier, the director of public communications at MNA, the amount of participation from the nurses was unprecedented.”