Nurses at Children’s Memorial Medical Center on Tuesday filed a formal petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking authority to form a collective bargaining unit.
The union organizing drive at the North Side hospital is being led by the Illinois Nurses Association on behalf of more than 600 registered nurses at Children’s Memorial.
Kay Jones, an organizer with the nurses association, claims the union has the support of an “overwhelming majority” of nurses at Children’s Memorial, who are distressed by staff cutbacks and other cost reductions at the hospital.
“Cutting registered nurses and replacing them with untrained patient assistants may make sense in a boardroom, but at bedside it doesn’t,” said Stephen Frum, a nurse in Children Memorial’s pediatric intensive-care unit.
About 400 jobs have been eliminated at the hospital over the last three years and there has been a steady exodus of highly experienced nurses from Children’s Memorial, even as the structure of nursing management has been reorganized.
For Carol Rosenbusch, a nurse in the hospital’s newborn intensive-care unit, the primary issue is one of more input into decision-making.
“We want more of a voice in how things go at the hospital,” she said. “Right now, we really don’t have a say.”
Hospital managers dispute that, pointing to a formal process for nurses’ input on patient care at Children’s Memorial known as the “clinical governance model.”
The hospital clearly looks upon the organizing drive with dis-
favor.
“We would prefer to continue the direct relationship we have with our nurses rather than have a relationship with a third party,” said Paul Macuga, chief organizational development officer at the hospital.
The union drive comes as the hospital is in a state of flux. In November, its chief executive left abruptly in the midst of a major strategic planning process. Earlier, the hospital said its operating losses reached more than $11 million last year, the highest level in years.
