National Nurses United organizers at Ascension Seton Medical Center just delivered a major victory for the Texas labor movement. Healthcare Unions
Kellen Gildersleeve, a labor and delivery nurse in Austin, has just helped birth one of the Texas labor movement’s biggest victories in recent memory. Last week, nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center voted overwhelmingly to join National Nurses United, the largest nurses’ union in the United States. Approximately 800 nurses will be covered by the union, which is now entering contract negotiations with hospital management.
According to Gildersleeve, working conditions at Ascension Seton have deteriorated ever since 2017, when Seton Healthcare Family became Ascension Seton Medical Center as part of a national rebranding by Ascension Health, one of the largest nonprofit hospital operators in the country. She said around the same time, staff-to-patient ratios began dropping, and each nurse had to take on a heavier workload.
“Whenever staffing is not adequate, nurses do not have the time to advocate for their patients in the way that they were taught,” Gildersleeve explained. “That is going to inevitably cause safety issues, because even experienced nurses with good intuition might miss something if they have to run to answer the next call.”
with the National Labor Relations Board, the nurses voted 385 to 151 to unionize with National Nurses United. , the hospital said: “Consistent with the ethical and religious directives for Catholic Health Care Services, we respect our nurses’ right to organize themselves through union representation. We are united in our commitment to care for our community and those that we are privileged to serve.”
“It really empowers nurses to be part of the union,” said Sylvia Higgins, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Corpus Christi Medical Center. With each of the four contracts her facility’s bargaining committee has negotiated, they’ve improved working conditions, she said—including pay increases and scheduling more staff where they’re needed. Higgins feels nurses are on equal terms with management now, and that hospital administrators need to listen to their concerns.
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