A contingent of nurses at Ascension St. Anges Hospital in Baltimore is filing to decertify the union that employees voted to join last November.
The nurses filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board on Nov. 15 to decertify National Nurses United (NNU).
To file for a vote, the petition must be signed by 180 of the 600 nurses in the hospital.
Jennifer Delaney, a nurse at St. Agnes, spearheaded the petition with the help of the National Right to Work Defense Fund, a nonpartisan group that pushes back against unions. The organization’s board members have ties to conservative organizations.
“This union proved itself to be a divisive force as soon as it began campaigning at our hospital,” Delaney said. “Many of the nurses opposed its agenda from the very beginning, and a year since it gained power it is still making things difficult for both us and our patients.”
The nurses at St. Agnes voted to join NNU in November 2023. Since then, management and labor have been at loggerheads trying to hammer down a contract.
“We, the nurses, are our union. We voted to unionize, and our bargaining team of nurses is at the negotiating table with management fighting for a strong first contract,” said Robin Buckner, a nurse at St. Agnes affiliated with NNU. “We unionized to have a voice at our hospital, not to be silenced by management or their buddies at third-party, anti-union organizations. If it does come to a vote, we're confident nurses will recertify our union.”
The nurses say they are chronically understaffed and have a retention problem that is partly due to poor pay.
“In ICU, we usually do one nurse for every two patients,” Melissa LaRue, an ICU nurse at St. Agnes said. “St. Agnes has been cutting that and at times we've had to take care of three patients instead of two. We feel like we're being put in unsafe situations for our patients.”
Ascension hospitals all over the nation have been criticized for their staffing model. In 2022, The New York Times conducted an investigation that found the company created its own staffing crisis before COVID put pressure on the healthcare system, stating that many “cut staff to skeletal levels” that compromised patient safety.
The nurses are asking for safe staffing, floating clusters, increase in pay for RNs and articles that would protect nurses in new graduate orientation.
Baltimore City Council President-elect Zeke Cohen has been supportive of NNU’s role.
“The labor movement has always been the backbone of Baltimore, and I’m proud to stand with the nurses at Ascension,” he told WYPR. “These folks put their lives on the line each day to care for our families and communities. They deserve to have safe staffing levels, and so do the patients they treat. I will continue to fight alongside these nurses and our allies in labor to guarantee our nurses have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs safely.”
Nurses working at Ascension in Texas and Kansas finished labor contract negotiations with administrators earlier this year.
