restructuring<\/a> of their employee health care plans. The strike lasted seven days, from Feb. 19 to Feb. 26, outside Keck Hospital.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s the last option that we have,\u201d said Chief Nurse Union Representative Rudy Cuellar, a cardiothoracic ICU nurse who has worked at Keck for almost 30 years.<\/p>\n
Despite multiple attempts to get Keck to \u201ccome to the table,\u201d the bargaining team and the hospital have made no progress on a new contract since the strike, said Cuellar. Any offers that Keck Medicine does send are \u201cnowhere near what we need,\u201d said Cuellar.<\/p>\n
This is the second time nurses have gone on strike since contract negotiations began in May 2025. The first strike centered on better wages and appropriate resources for nurses; it started Oct. 30, 2026 and lasted one day.<\/p>\n
Nurses did not expect to strike a second time. But the length of negotiation has left Cuellar and other nurses feeling like the university does not \u201cvalue the nurses.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cKeck Medicine of USC has bargained in good faith, and Keck Medicine agreed to work with a federal mediator to facilitate discussions before the strike,\u201d said Keck Medicine in a statement to Annenberg Media. <\/p>\n
Prior to the contract\u2019s expiration, nurses had access to a free Anthem HMO plan, which, according to Keck Nurse Zeinoon Malaeb, \u201cmany nurses liked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malaeb explained that the HMO plan had no premium costs and allowed nurses to see physicians in their own communities, which was important to many nurses who live outside the USC area. The changes to the health plan have left many nurses and their loved ones cut off from their health care providers and forced to seek care at USC facilities. <\/p>\n
The hospital will not restore the HMO plan until nurses agree to its proposed terms \u2014 terms that Malaeb describes as offering \u201cbottom of the market raises.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bargaining team is seeking wages that match those of Keck Hospital\u2019s competitors. UCLA\u2019s hospital system ratified its contract, which includes an 18.5% increase to the minimum wage over four years, with nurses on Nov. 22, 2025. <\/p>\n
Malaeb said USC\u2019s best offer was 12.15%, which he called \u201cfrustrating\u201d because the hospital has not set bargaining dates. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn my opinion, and in the opinion of the majority of nurses, the reason behind that is to tire us out so that we get frustrated,\u201d Malaeb said. \u201cAnd if we\u2019re frustrated and tired out, we\u2019ll just accept any deal that they are offering us instead of a good deal that we deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things were not better when the strike ended. <\/p>\n
USC\u2019s preparation for the strike included cutting off all nurses\u2019 access to USC\u2019s network, including work emails, time card software and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 the patient charting software. When nurses resumed their shifts on Feb. 26, they were still locked out of those patient charts. The lockout caused a delay of more than two hours while the IT department worked to restore access for nearly 2,000 nurses. <\/p>\n
Keck Medicine did not respond to specific requests for comment regarding the health system\u2019s strike preparations. <\/p>\n
Nathaniel, a registered nurse at Keck Hospital, who was granted partial anonymity due to concerns about job security, recalled the chaotic day nurses returned from the strike. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur nurses showed up. They didn\u2019t receive in-person reports on their patients, which is not the standard practice,\u201d he said. On top of that, Keck nurses were unable to conduct a proper handoff with the replacement strike nurses who had worked during the seven-day strike.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral operations had to be delayed because the caregivers did not have access to the medical records,\u201d Malaeb said.<\/p>\n
Nathaniel felt the whole situation \u201cwas not safe, and the hospital had no plan to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
With how the university has handled these negotiations, nurses are worried about what continued labor struggles could bring. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you start treating nurses as disposable parts, I think they\u2019re going to stop seeing the hospital as a valued partner,\u201d Nathaniel said.<\/p>\n
Keck Medicine is known for its top rankings in various surgical specialties, high safety scores and strong patient satisfaction ratings. But Nathaniel says, \u201cYou can\u2019t maintain that if you don\u2019t maintain the nursing staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nurses are hoping for an agreement soon, but ongoing labor disputes could lead to more strikes. The bargaining team and the federal mediator have plans to meet on April 17 and May 4, according to Cuellar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not asking for anything unreasonable,\u201d Malaeb said. \u201cWe are just asking to be treated the same.\u201d <\/p>\n
So long as nurses are still working at Keck Hospital of USC, Cuellar said, the university \u201cneeds to treat us like members of the Trojan family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a week-long strike, more than 2,000 nurses at Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center returned to their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1280,89618,110676,110675,48,52,51,47,50,49,83,86,3533],"class_list":{"0":"post-247991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-health-care","9":"tag-keck","10":"tag-keck-hospital","11":"tag-keck-medicine","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","17":"tag-los-angeles-news","18":"tag-nurses","19":"tag-strike","20":"tag-usc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}