Unionized nurses at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore are preparing to hold a one-day strike next week, over what organizers say is hospital management’s refusal to address understaffing and other issues.

“We want to give our patients the best care at all times, but that is difficult to do when we are stretched too thin,” Nicki Horvat, a nurse at Saint Agnes, said in a news release.

More than 600 union nurses will strike, according to National Nurses United, the group that Saint Agnes nurses formed a union with. The union said this is the first time hospital nurses have gone on a strike in Baltimore.

The strike will begin 7 a.m. on July 24 until 6:59 a.m. on July 25. The nurses plan to picket outside the hospital and hold a rally.

National Nurses United told management about their plans to strike on Monday, 10 days before the strike “to allow for alternative plans to be made for patient care,” the union said.

Registered nurses at Saint Agnes have been negotiating a contract with hospital management since January 2024 after voting to unionize in 2023.

Saint Agnes is part of Ascension, a private Catholic health care system that runs hospitals across the U.S. In a statement, hospital leaders said there is a “comprehensive contingency plan” in place to avoid any disruptions to patient care.

The union wants the hospital to agree to hire more nurses and eliminate the placement of nurses in departments where they have not been trained. More than 10% of nurses left Saint Agnes between April and July of this year due to these “chronic issues,” the union said.

“Ascension is continuously over-reliant on floating nurses to other units to plug the staffing holes they intentionally create,” said Gideon Eziama, a nurse at Saint Agnes. “Floating” refers to the practice of assigning nurses to units of the hospital where they don’t normally work.

During the fall of 2023, the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the hospital, alleging that management threatened to withdraw employee benefits from the nurses and tried to stop their unionizing efforts.

A 2022 investigation in The New York Times found Ascension spent years trying to downsize staff to improve profitability, which led to understaffed hospitals and delayed treatments for patients.

“We want management to stop prioritizing their bottom line over patients and community,” Robin Buckner, a nurse at Saint Agnes, wrote in an email to The Baltimore Banner. “We are fired up about holding our first strike and committed to winning a strong contract so the hospital can be safely staffed, now and in the future.”