UChicago nurses voted Tuesday to authorize a strike as months-long contract negotiations between National Nurses United (NNU) and UChicago Medicine (UCM) have stalled. The vote does not mean a strike is certain but allows the labor union’s bargaining team to call a one-day strike at their discretion.

On its website, NNU said the bargaining team would call a strike if UCM management did not “address staffing concerns which lead to patient safety issues.”

At a rally held on Tuesday at the corner of 58th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, ICU nurse and NNU bargaining team member Amber Turi said that “management has not moved at all on these core staffing issues,” despite 17 meetings and 24 tentative agreements with UCM.

Unresolved issues include low staffing levels at Mitchell Hospital, one of UCM’s two major hospitals in Hyde Park. According to Turi, Medicare and Medicaid patients, whose government insurance pays hospitals less per treatment than private insurers do, are disproportionately sent to Mitchell over UCM’s other major Hyde Park hospital, the Center for Care and Discovery. Over 70 percent of UCM’s self-defined “Primary Service Area” is Black and almost 40 percent is insured by Medicaid; Turi sees Mitchell’s “deliberate understaffing as a form of systemic racism.” 

NNU claims many staffing issues date back to difficult working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. In NNU’s statement, Turi recounts having “no environmental services, no food service, no EKG techs, no supplies” at Mitchell Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. “UChicago refused to consider retention compensation during this difficult time, even though it was being offered at other hospitals,” Turi said.

Turi added that 60 percent of her nursing unit left their jobs during this time, and that the severe staffing issues have resulted in NNU nurses missing 244,946 lunches combined in fiscal year 2022. This means that the average NNU nurse at UChicago, often working a 12-hour shift, missed roughly 86 lunches in 2022.

While Turi delivered her remarks, nurses walked out of nearby hospital buildings in their scrubs to cast their ballots at NNU’s polling station, set up on the sidewalk as cars streamed by on Cottage Grove Avenue.

“Turnout’s been excellent,” Drew Castenson, a Mitchell nurse supervising the voting, said. Voting took place from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at UCM’s Hyde Park location and in shorter windows at UCM locations in South Shore, South Loop, and Orland Park, said Stephanie Gamboa, an outpatient clinic nurse on NNU’s bargaining team. Gamboa said that UCM has only moved on “small” points since a large NNU rally on January 15, and that the labor union is still looking for concessions on workplace safety and retirement in addition to staffing concerns.

Before the vote, Turi said that while they “do not want to strike,” calling one is “not off the table” for negotiators if the union’s rank and file authorized one. 

“We cannot provide the highest quality of care when we are running on fumes,” emergency room nurse Scott Mechanic said. “We deserve better and our patients deserve better.”

While earlier this month, UCM laid off 180 administrative employees, citing difficult financial circumstances facing hospitals nationwide, the system has undertaken a number of capital projects. The medical system broke ground on an $815 million cancer care and research pavilion late last year and announced the launch of the Center to Eliminate Cancer Inequity (CinEQUITY) last week. UCM also acquired a controlling stake in four suburban hospitals in early 2023.

In a statement to The Maroon, UCM emphasized that a strike has only been authorized, not called, and wrote that “both sides have exchanged dozens of proposals, reaching roughly two dozen tentative agreements on a number of topics—seven during the last bargaining session alone. There also have been important conversations on key topics such as nurse education, staffing and compensation.”

Characterizing the negotiations so far as “steady progress,” UCM wrote that “the real work of reaching a contract can only be accomplished at the bargaining table, and UCMC [UChicago Medical Center] is committed to continuing good-faith negotiations.”

At least three more bargaining sessions are scheduled for February and March. UCM concluded that they “remain optimistic that both sides will reach an agreement that allows us to continue to retain and attract the high caliber of nurses who so meaningfully contribute to our reputation for providing excellent care.”