Increasingly, nurses are seeing union representation as healthcare companies grow and consolidate, and that includes in Chicago as medical professionals protest the firing of two nurses.
Those seeking to organize are turning to groups like the Teamsters, who now represent more than 10,000 nurses nationwide according to the group’s latest estimates.
The union is trying to organize in the Chicago area, and is currently targeting Evanston-based Endeavor Health which operates nine hospitals in the Chicago area.
In Evanston, the union staged a rally and a call for the company to reinstate two intensive care unit nurses who it says were fired for union activity. Tricia Poreda trained the two nurses who have not been named by the union, and she described them as exemplary practitioners who never were never disciplined before.
“They fired them for bringing documentation and nurses day gifts up to their nurses,” she said
This week Teamsters Joint Council 25 representative David Bernt presented a list of demands to Endeavor’s legal counsel, including the reinstatement of those two nurses.
The Teamsters are trying to organize more than 3,000 Endeavor nurses like Stacy Oswald, who rotates between Endeavor emergency rooms.
“Management has unrealistic, penny-pinching expectations that stretch us too thin and leave our units unsafely staffed,” Oswald said.
Brent said he is seeing healthcare systems and hospitals cutting back on staffing and nurse compensation, which he said leads to cutbacks in patient care.
Poreda said she is concerned about staff cutbacks at Evanston Hospital where a security guard was wounded in a shooting incident last year.
At least one nurse expressed concern about decreased staffing levels at Evanston hospital, arguing it was at least partly responsible for a shooting incident that left a security guard injured.
“They pulled the security guards that were monitoring our behavioral health patients in the ED (emergency department),” she said.“You think that they would want to step things up, but they are just stepping things back…and our patients are suffering.”
NBC Chicago has reached out to Endeavor for a comment but have not heard back.
In the past they have said “Endeavor Health has and will continue to respect the federally protected rights of our nurses to make an informed choice about union representation.”
Endeavor is not the only focus for the Teamsters.
In January, members ratified a contract with Rush University Medical Center.
The Teamsters are also negotiating on behalf of nurses at the University of Chicago.
