Dozens of registered nurses organised a demonstration outside Mercy Hospital Downtown in Bakersfield on July 16. The nurses, who are represented by the California Nurses Association (CNA), protested staffing reductions at three CommonSpirit Dignity Health hospitals.
These hospitals are Bakersfield Memorial, Mercy Hospital Downtown, and Mercy Hospital Southwest. The nurses and the CNA demanded that CommonSpirit immediately rescind all layoff notices and ensure safe staffing numbers to serve patients.
The protesters were seen holding placards that read “Safe Staffing Save Lives”, “Some Cuts Don’t Heal”, and “Fund Care Not Billionaires”.
RNs to @commonspirit: Rescind the layoff notices!
Bakersfield deserves better. Staffing cuts hurt patients, nurses, and our communities! pic.twitter.com/FFSbZJUwwZ
— California Nurses Association (@CalNurses) July 16, 2026
Per Bakersfield.com, Dignity Health filed a WARN notice confirming 57 permanent layoffs at Bakersfield Memorial, including 33 RNs. This will come into effect on August 3.
Layoff notices targeted a nurse educator, a safety nurse, LVN emergency department staff, transcriptionists, orderlies, and unit secretaries, among others. The nurse educator role ensures clinical competency training, and the safety nurse provides medication and lab order oversight.
Nurses have emphasized how eliminating these essential workers pushes the workload onto the remaining staff, which causes delays in providing medications and helping patients.
“When hospitals cut nurses and other health workers, patient care suffers,” Sandy Reding, registered nurse at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital and president of CNA, said in a press release on July 14. “The work doesn’t disappear, it gets pushed onto fewer caregivers. Medications are delayed, call lights will go unanswered, and wait times in the ER will increase. Every minute we spend doing work that was once handled by educators, unit secretaries, licensed vocational nurses, or other support staff is time taken away from direct patient care. Our patients deserve better, and that’s why we are speaking out.”
The layoff notices were issued in the wake of the closure of the Grossman Burn Center at Bakersfield Memorial, Kern County’s only burn center, on June 30.
It’s not only in Bakersfield where staff are being fired. Per Becker’s Hospital Review, 82 hospital workers in Los Angeles were laid off by Dignity Health.
Across Arizona, California, and Nevada, Dignity Health, whose parent company is CommonSpirit Health, employs over 55,000 hospital workers.
“At Bakersfield Memorial Hospital and California Hospital Medical Center, our unwavering commitment is to deliver exceptional care and be a strong, sustainable partner in the health of our communities,” a Dignity Health spokesperson told Becker’s. “Maintaining this commitment is difficult given the financial landscape impacting healthcare systems across the country which have impacted our business as well.”
Although leaders of the healthcare company have insisted that the layoffs were due to financial reasons, nurses have said tax documents from 2020-2024 paint a different picture.
During this time, CommonSpirit’s top 10 executives received over $310.5 million in combined compensation. Additionally, the company’s CEO received a compensation package worth more than $14 million for the fiscal year 2025.
At this time, it is unclear if Dignity Health plans to issue more layoff notices in the future. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, CommonSpirit is ironing out a multibillion-dollar financial turnaround plan following its reported losses of over $1 billion.