Nurses Strike at Madison Hospital

Striking nurses and supporters circle the UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital in Madison on the first day of a five-day walkout Tuesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

With a spirited rally, a picket line march around the building and a small brass band, nurses at UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital in Madison launched a five-day walkout Tuesday, reiterating their demands for changes in safety practices, minimum ratios of nurses to patients and improved pay.

The strike — the first ever by nurses at Meriter hospital — is scheduled to run through Saturday. It follows the end of bargaining on Monday, May 19, when the nurses’ union bargaining team turned down the hospital management’s latest proposal.

Services Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin and UnityPoint Health-Meriter have been in negotiations since earlier this year on a new contract covering about 950 nurses. The nurses’ most recent two-year agreement expired in late March and they have since been working without a contract.

The nurses’ contract demands include establishing required ratios of nurses to patients, improved safety for hospital employees and pay increases — particularly for senior nurses, according to union officials.

“Time and time again, Meriter’s management refused to meet us halfway,” said nurse Lindsey Miller, one of three bargaining team members who spoke at the strike’s opening-day rally Tuesday morning. “At our last bargaining session, it was management, not nurses, who walked away from the bargaining table.”

Miller said the most recent management officer included “an unacceptable raise that doesn’t cover the cost of living” and made “no progress” towards the nurses’ union’s demands for staffing commitments or security improvements.

“I am striking because I love working here,” said Madison Vander Hill, a birthing center nurse and one of six union speakers at the rally. “I love getting to walk alongside and care for families as they go through one of the most transformative experiences of their lives.”

Vander Hill said she and other nurses were striking “because we must see tangible change from management in order to ensure that safety and security are prioritized and the things we love about the work that we do are protected.”

Her coworker, Audrey Willems Van Dijk, said the nurses’ concerns extended to concerns for the hospital’s patients.

“We are fighting for every single person who walks through Meriter’s doors,” she said. “Yes, we deserve adequate compensation, but more than that, we deserve safety and security for ourselves and our community. We deserve respect.”

Dane County Executive Melissa Agard declared her support for the nurses and connected their dispute with former Gov. Scott Walker’s signature legislation after he took office in 2011 — Act 10, stripping most public workers of most union rights.

“It was his mission to crack the foundation of union rights in the state of Wisconsin. And that crack has continued not only in Wisconsin but across our nation, and you guys are here to say, ‘No more,’” Agard said.

As the strike got underway this week, Meriter told nurses that health benefits — including health insurance — would be cut off as of June 1 for nurses who do not report for their first scheduled shift during the strike this week.

A union spokesperson said the effect of the order would be to cut off benefits for strikers for the month of June if the two sides don’t reach a tentative agreement on Thursday, when their next bargaining session is scheduled.

Meriter spokesperson Nicole Aimone confirmed in an email message Tuesday that nurses who do not report for their first shift during the strike will be put on “inactive status” through Sunday, June 1, with their benefits ending as of that date.

Nurses whose benefits are cut off would have to use the federal law known as COBRA to maintain their coverage, paying for their insurance out of pocket. The law, enacted in the 1980s, enables fired or laid-off workers to maintain their employer’s health insurance temporarily at their own cost.

“They will have the ability to re-enroll once they are placed back into active employee status,” Aimone said.

The union has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over the hospital’s action.

“It is outrageous and it is disgusting,” said Ben Wikler, the outgoing chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, addressing the rally. Wikler went on to lead hundreds of sign-carrying nurses and supporters in chanting, “Union busting is disgusting!”

“When management says you’ll lose your health insurance if you insist that there [should be] enough nurses on the floor to make sure that everyone is taken care of — it is disgusting,” Wikler said.

He described the dispute in the larger context of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

“They think that the Trump administration and the National Labor Relations Board that this administration has gotten is going to turn its back on working people,” Wikler said.

“They will still have to come back to the negotiating table and they will have to do what’s right, because you are building the power to make them do what’s right,” he added.

The hospital is continuing to operate during the strike. Aimone said that the hospital has contracted with an outside agency for replacement “travel nurses” to support ongoing patient care.

She said she did not have information on the cost for the contract nurses who are filling in during the walkout.

Nurses launch strike at Meriter hospital, the first in the facility’s history was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.