Registered nurses at Sharp HealthCare began waving picket signs at 7 a.m. Wednesday that read “On strike for patient care and safety.” By 9:30 a.m., a key Sharp executive, standing before television cameras, objected vigorously to that slogan, insisting that it leaves out the true motivation for this three-day work stoppage.
Susan Stone, a registered nurse and Sharp’s chief nursing executive, pushed back on any suggestion that the quality of patient care is an issue.
“We received a 10-day strike notice citing unsafe staffing and patient safety concerns,” Stone said. “I want to be very clear: Sharp maintains safe, legally-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios across all of our hospitals and, oftentimes, exceeds those mandated ratios.
“Our organization is widely recognized as a destination of choice for nurses across the country with multiple magnet-designated hospitals of nursing excellences and decades of recognition for clinical excellence and patient safety.”
Over 5,700 Sharp Health Care nurses started a three-day strike on November 26, 2025 in San Diego, CA. Here, nurses picket outside of Sharp Memorial Hospital. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, 5,800 Sharp nurses plan to strike through Friday, returning to work at 7 a.m. on Saturday.
While picket signs on display Wednesday do focus on patient care, there were plenty of hand-made signs calling for fair wages. And the union’s written strike promotional materials cite safe staffing, sick policy and wages as the reasons for the strike.
Stone said that Sharp has offered nurses what it considers meaningful raises that have thus far been rejected.
“Our proposal offers significant guaranteed pay increases totaling more than 16% over four years with nearly 10% in the first two years alone,” Stone said.
RNs Kyle Casipit and wife Narisa were among the over 5,700 Sharp Health Care nurses that participated in a three-day strike on November 26, 2025 in San Diego, CA. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
She added that the bump would take the average registered nurse salary from $160,000 to $180,000 per year “with the most experienced nurses averaging an annual salary of $225,000.”
Alana Lawler, a registered nurse and chair of the Sharp bargaining unit, was surprised to hear those numbers.
“I would love to see their math, because I have no idea where that would come from,” Lawler said. “I mean, I don’t know, I’ve been here 24 years, and I think I make that, or just maybe a few cents over that, but that’s not our average nurse.
“Our average nurse is not a 20- or 24-year senior nurse.”
She also defended the union’s use of patient care and safety language on the strike line.
“Everything circles back to patient care if our wages aren’t comparable to all other hospitals in the San Diego metro area,” Lawler said. “If we have a retention crisis like we had in 2022 and we lose tons of nurses, that does create unsafe staffing, and that does create patient safety issues.”
Over 5,700 Sharp Health Care nurses started a three-day strike on November 26. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Union members said that they have analyzed contracts in place at other major medical providers and have found Sharp’s offer lacking.
Pamela Chandran, the unit’s chief negotiator and a union attorney, said that she does not know how the cited 16% raise mentioned at Sharp’s news conference was derived.
“That’s not what they have on the table,” Chandran said. “What we are countering with is something that gets us close to, but not even on parity with, UC (University of California) and Kaiser.
“We are losing nurses to those two places because they pay double-digit percentages higher at the mid- and senior career step. We are not asking them to close that gap, we understand that’s a huge gap, but we’re asking them to make it less distant.”
University of California nurses recently announced their own tentative collective bargaining agreement, which Becker’s Hospital Review, an industry news publication, recently reported offers an 18.5% wage increase over four years.
A major sticking point, she added, is a new “wage grid” for new hires that offers less compensation to nurses with roughly 15 years or more of experience.
“We’re going to have a two-tier wage system under their proposal, so they are asking us to divide our nurses, and they’re asking us to agree to a wage chart that’s worse than what we have now.”
Nurses have also objected to Sharp’s previous accrual schedule for sick leave, saying that “nurses must work for 10 weeks to accrue enough sick time to cover a single shift.”
Stone said that Sharp’s latest proposal scraps accrual, instead granting each nurse 70 hours of paid sick time at the beginning of each year.
The executive said that Sharp has brought in 950 temporary workers to keep its medical facilities running during the strike. Strike organizers said that while there will be picketing on Thanksgiving Day, labor demonstrations will be limited to the morning hours with members, many who would normally be filling shifts at Sharp hospitals, urged to go home for holiday meals in the afternoon and evening hours before resuming pickets on Friday morning.
Union leaders said that this week’s strike is the first since nurses unionized in 1996.