The University of Illinois has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop many of its nurses from taking part in a strike planned for Saturday, saying it could endanger patients.
About 1,300 nurses at University of Illinois Hospital and its clinics, who are members of the Illinois Nurses Association, have said they plan to strike after failing to reach agreement on a new contract with the health system.
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court Tuesday by the university’s board of trustees, asks the court to prevent nurses in a number of areas from walking off the job, including those in the medical/surgical COVID-19 unit, bone marrow transplant unit, labor and delivery unit and pediatric intensive care unit.
About 525 nurses work in units the hospital wants to keep from striking, the lawsuit alleges.
Allowing those nurses to strike “would constitute a clear and present danger to the health or safety of the public,” the lawsuit alleges. “This is true even in the best of times, but even more so in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic.”
The lawsuit alleges the nurses should not be allowed to strike because of the “critical nature of the services provided in those units, the lack of qualified substitutes to perform nurses’ duties and the inability to move such patients to other facilities without jeopardizing their health.”
The Illinois Nurses Association said in a statement Tuesday that the university should drop its lawsuit and return to the negotiating table to bargain in good faith.
“It is worth noting that the lawsuit alleges UIH nurses should not be allowed to strike because they are irreplaceable,” the union said. “Yet UIH refuses to offer protections from the pandemic such as adequate PPE (personal protective equipment), and enforceable safe staffing standards.”
The union and hospital have been in negotiations over a new contract throughout the summer. Their last three-year contract expired this week.
A main sticking point in negotiations has been nurse-to-patient ratios. The union wants the hospital to set limits on the numbers of patients assigned to nurses, but the hospital has said it prefers a patient acuity-based model, which aims to align patients’ needs with nurses’ skills.
The University of Illinois Hospital is on the city’s West Side and has 462 beds. It serves many low-income patients.
The health system filed a similar lawsuit the last time the nurses planned a strike in 2017. In that case, a Cook County Circuit judge ruled that 213 nurses, working in certain critical units, couldn’t strike.
That strike was ultimately averted when the hospital and union reached an agreement.
