Dive Brief:

• Nurses recently reached contract agreements with hospitals in states including Ohio and Minnesota, according to a Becker's Hospital Review roundup of hospital-union events, including strikes, rallies and new contract agreements occurring since the beginning of April.
• But unionized healthcare workers recently went on strikes at places including the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and Geisinger-Lewiston Hospital in Pennsylvania; and nurses held pickets and rallies in places including California, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
• The California Hospital Association and the state's largest hospital worker union, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers East, formed a strategic relationship aimed at creating a new model of hospital-labor relations. Other unions are not pleased with the collaboration.

Dive Insight:

Strikes and pickets by nurses and other unionized healthcare workers are nothing new, and not confined to the U.S. healthcare system. And workers are within their rights to undertake such activities.

But the Affordable Care Act is changing the landscape, and unions face pressures from reform on both ends: trying to pay for union members' mandated insurance coverage, and trying to keep the peace with hospitals that continue to struggle over their financial bottom lines.