CHICAGO — More than 400 members of the National Nurses United union carried out a one-day strike Sept. 3 at the St. Mary of Nazareth hospital here and three other hospitals owned by Prime Healthcare in California and Nevada. Nurses also held a rally outside Prime Healthcare’s Olympia Fields hospital in the south suburbs the same day.
Registered nurses at St. Mary of Nazareth voted by 96% to join the union in June. Since then, they say, the company has stalled on negotiating a contract. One of the central issues they are fighting for is better staffing.
“It’s becoming standard now to have three patients at a time,” Anna Bilanicz, an intensive care nurse who has worked at the hospital for decades, told the Militant. “It used to be two. I used to feel fulfilled going to work, now I leave discouraged. We want to save lives.”
Prime Healthcare, a for-profit company, bought St. Mary and seven other hospitals in Illinois last year. “Prime has a history of acquiring hospitals and then cutting services after it promised to maintain them,” the union said in a press statement. The company just announced it is suspending less profitable obstetric care at three hospitals in the greater Chicago area.
At the Olympia Fields Hospital rally, nurses and supporters demanded reinstatement of six nurses who the union says “were suspended for speaking up for their patients.” Nurses there will vote on union representation Sept. 23.
The union has announced a one-day strike at Olympia Fields Sept. 15, as well as sympathy strikes and protests at other Prime hospitals nationwide. Details are available on the union website, nationalnursesunited.org.