COLUMBUS, Ohio — Some 100 nurses and their supporters rallied outside Nationwide Children’s Hospital here June 24 to build support for their fight to win union representation. They began working with AFSCME-United Nurses of America last September.
“I’ve been a nurse for two years and this is my first nursing job,” 25-year-old Samantha Patlin, who works in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, told the Militant. “The main reason I am supporting the union is the need for safe staffing ratios. It’s not fair for us or for our patients, our babies especially, to have a 40-bed unit without enough nurses every single day.”
The union staffs a coffee truck in Livingston Park across the street from the hospital. “It gives us an opportunity to talk to co-workers away from the job,” Phil Streza, a nurse involved in the organizing drive at Nationwide, said. “Nurses get a free cup of coffee and the opportunity to sign union cards. We’ve gotten a lot that way and we’re getting close to the threshold we need to call for a vote.”
“I actually took a pay cut of 25% to come to work at Nationwide,” Streza said, adding that he had worked at a union hospital before that. “It’s the pay, the medical insurance, personal time off, retirement benefits and more we can win. But it’s also because we are the people at the bedside, we are the advocates for the patients, the children, and we need the right to speak freely about their care.”