UI Health Hospital
Hundreds of registered nurses at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, or UI Health, went on strike this morning at the West Side hospital near the United Center, the headquarters of this week’s Democratic National Convention.
Unionized UI Health nurses, represented by the Illinois Nurses Association, or INA, say they are protesting management’s unfair labor practices, understaffing and stagnating pay.
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A four-year contract between the union and management expired today, but with unresolved issues, the nurses took to the picket line.
The DNC, which begins today, is expected to bring thousands of politicos, journalists and other spectators to Chicago. UI Health’s medical center is just a mile away from the convention’s headquarters at the United Center. The strike is expected to last throughout the entirety of the DNC, through Aug. 25. Pickets will run from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Not all 1,700 UI Health nurses are striking, though. Roughly 600 nurses won’t be picketing due to a court injunction filed by UI Health and granted last week, barring emergency department, intensive care units and other nurses from striking, according to the INA.
Asked for comment today, a UI Health spokesperson pointed Crain's to various previously published statements about its ongoing negotiations with the union. In an Aug. 17 statement, UI Health said the injunction "applies only to a small number of nursing positions that were narrowly identified because a stoppage would create a clear and present danger to the health and safety of the public, based on their placement in 14 critical care units."
"We are prepared to continue safe patient care and ongoing operations," the statement continued.
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UI Health licensed practical nurses are set to join registered nurses for five of the seven strike days.
The INA says it has filed several unfair labor practice charges against UI Health, alleging management has regressively bargained and presented misleading information about negotiations directly to nurses. The union also says the hospital is understaffed, intensifying the workload on UI Health nurses. Nurses have also experienced patient violence while on the job.
“They are expecting nurses to take on higher numbers of patients and maintain knowledge of a larger array of health issues all while admitting that the patients we have coming in are sicker on the whole,” Roberto Flores, a nurse on the INA bargaining team, said in a statement. “And on top of that, they are telling us that we should accept a pay scale that leaves us behind other hospitals in Chicago.”
Earlier this month, UI Health nurses overwhelmingly authorized their bargaining unit to call the strike. Of 1,377 votes cast, 1,348 voted to get on the picket line.
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UI Health said in a statement that both parties have met more than 17 times since June 18 when negotiations first began.
Nurses last went on strike at UI Health in September 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, nurses returned to work without an immediate settlement but said the seven-day strike led to progress in negotiations. At about the same time that year, some 4,000 workers represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 73 also went on strike at UI Health.
When nurses reached a contract agreement, they said the new contract included better access to personalized protection equipment and hazard pay.
Jon Asplund contributed to this report.
This story first appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business.
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