Nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital have filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging that SSM Health violated federal labor law by refusing to negotiate a union contract and interfering with nurses’ rights.
The charges were filed Sept. 8, nearly two months after St. Mary’s nurses voted overwhelmingly to unionize under Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin. Nurses voted 89% in favor of unionization on July 10.
Since the election, SSM Health has twice sought to have the results overturned, arguing that certain employees — including charge nurses — should not have been eligible to vote. Those challenges were unsuccessful. The NLRB determined that SSM Health lost its opportunity to challenge the eligibility of those voters because it failed to file the necessary paperwork within the required timeframe.
“SSM should be investing in staffing, support and retention of nurses, not wasting time and resources fighting our union, which is our voice to speak up for our patients,” said Hannah Joers, who works in the Cardiac Cath Lab at St. Mary’s. “I’ve always had a drive for helping people and I’m proud to serve patients in my community. But because SSM staffs based on ‘productivity grids’ rather than patients’ sickness level, it’s very challenging for nurses to provide the level of care we believe in.”
Of the charges filed against SSM Health, St. Mary’s claims that its parent company have:
- Failed to negotiate, as required under law after election results were certified.
- Discrimination against nurses by prohibiting union information while allowing non-union information to circulate.
- Destruction and confiscation of nurse union information and materials.
- Threatening nurses with discipline for union-supporting activities.
Madison365 verified through multiple sources in the past at both SEIU and St. Mary’s that SSM Health has engaged in overt anti-union activities.
Known, documented instances provided by nurses have included sending staff home for wearing union-themed accouterments, pouring water on union literature set out in employee areas, threatening indefinite suspension, destroying flyers, preventing access to cookies — which SSM Health has called the “cookie incident “ — both during Nurse Appreciation Week and during voting and changing screen savers in hospital computers to anti-union talking points.
Nurses have reached out multiple times to SSM Health urging it to end its anti-union campaign and start negotiations. SSM Health is yet to do so, and continues to double down on its claims that the results should be thrown out.
“Our number one goal is to win a contract which better takes patients’ level of sickness into account for staffing, and makes sure that we keep nurses by the bedside. SSM executives in St. Louis are abusing our empathy, making us do more and more with less and less,” Joers said. “We’ve had enough, and the time has come to transform the system so that our patients’ needs come first. We will never back down and we are 1,000% determined to win a strong contract to provide the highest quality patient care.”
