Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago rallied outside the facility Wednesday, protesting what they describe as a crackdown on their efforts to unionize by owner Prime Healthcare.
The registered nurses filed a petition May 20 with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. The nurses want to be represented by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United.
More than 400 registered nurses work at the Ukrainian Village hospital, according to the union.
Nurses said they decided to pursue unionization to advocate for themselves, protect patients and to have more of a voice at the hospital after Prime, a for-profit company, bought Saint Mary and seven other Illinois hospitals from nonprofit Ascension last year.
“It’s a community with a lot of diversity and making it a for-profit hospital, it limits our patients getting the correct help from us,” said Saint Mary nurse Brenda Hernandez.
Prime is based in California and has more than 50 hospitals across the country.
“Saint Mary of Nazareth, a member of the Prime Healthcare family of hospitals, deeply values our nurses and respects their right to organize and be heard, just as we deeply value the safety and care of all our employees, patients and visitors,” a spokesperson for Saint Mary said in a statement Wednesday.
According to the union, several nurses who were among those leading the union campaign were fired just days after the nurses filed their petition with the National Labor Relations Board.
“I was practicing my federally protected right, passing out flyers to my co-workers on the sidewalk on Division Street, just spreading the good news that we had officially filed for a union,” said nurse Mary Boyadjian, who worked in the emergency department. “They said I was let go because I was (soliciting) on hospital property.”
Nurse Karlie Thorn said she was told she was fired for trespassing during her off hours. Thorn, who also worked in the emergency department, said she’d been working at the hospital for about four years.
“It really puts into question how Prime really feels about its nurses,” Thorn said. “Do they really care about protecting their nurses?”
A spokesperson for Saint Mary said in a statement Wednesday that the hospital cannot comment on specific personnel matters but “is committed to ongoing, transparent discussions and engagement with our nurses.”
Prime has long said that its mission is to save struggling hospitals so the hospitals can continue to serve their communities. Prime has said that the eight Illinois hospitals were losing $200 million a year before Prime bought them, and that it plans to invest $250 million in the facilities.
But the nurses said they’ve seen problematic changes under Prime’s ownership. Prime has previously faced criticism for changes it made at other Illinois hospitals since purchasing them.
Hernandez said she’s worked at Saint Mary for about 10 years, including through other ownership changes. The hospital has shifted ownership three times in the last decade.
“I’ve gone through the transitions and no transition has ever been this bad,” Hernandez said. “Other transitions, yeah, you would see changes, fine, but with Prime, from the start, it was as if we were hired in a completely new company.”
Once the nurses hold a union election, if a majority of the nurses vote in favor of the union, Prime would then have to bargain with them in good faith over working conditions, according to processes outlined by the NLRB.
Earlier this month, nurses at Rush University Medical Center voted to unionize with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United.
