Nurses at Manahawkin’s Southern Ocean Medical Center and Neptune’s Jersey Shore University Medical Center have voted to authorize their bargaining committees to call for a strike or another form of concerted activity if they are unable to reach a contract agreement with the Hackensack Meridian Health System.

The unionized nurses at both HMH hospitals are members of the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union, New Jersey’s largest healthcare union, representing some 13,000 nurses and…