UI Health is one of Chicago’s most essential safety net hospitals. Its nurses have put their health on the line to save lives, prevent COVID spread and treat Chicago’s most vulnerable patient community over the past few years. Over that same time they have experienced understaffing, workplace violence and a loss in purchasing power to inflation.

Since beginning negotiations earlier this year, the bargaining team representing the UI Health RNs have been meeting with UIH leadership hoping to settle their contract before its August 19th expiration. The nurses have been very clear that their priorities are safety for nurses and patients, staffing ratios that allow for high quality care conditions and wages that compete with nearby hospitals. UIH leadership has fought these proposals while putting forward their own proposal to expand the areas of the hospital nurses would be expected to work in, whether they feel its safe or not.