This spring, the Nurse’s Union at Saint Joseph Medical Center will be entering into contract negotiations. Over the last 6 months, we have stressed to hospital management that our two main demands are for (1) improved education and (2) pay that is comparable to surrounding hospitals, to attract and retain nurses. Many educators from St. Joe’s have left, leaving the new graduate program only a shell of what it had been. Due to this and the lack of pay, many nurses are opting to work at other facilities. These nurses include those who have studied and grown up in Joliet. On top of that, St. Joe’s has lost many senior nurses that have been at the institution for years due to better wages at surrounding hospitals or understaffing leading them to retire early.

As research has shown, understaffing has a direct effect on patient care. When nurse staffing is dangerously low, patients suffer. As St. Joe’s, nurses continue to demand basic solutions that would improve staffing, Ascension has preferred to pay large amounts of money for travel/agency nurses that live in surrounding cities 20-40 miles away; however, they are unwilling to pay the fair market value for staff nurses that have grown up and/or currently live in Joliet. This is a clear example of Ascension’s unwillingness to invest in the Joliet community. It is no surprise that last year when ICU and ER nurses brought up that poor staffing at the hospital is putting patients in danger, Ascension didn’t care. ICU and ER night nurses walked into a dangerously low staffing situation that would have placed them with double or triple the number of patients that is considered safe for them to have. They demanded more hands for their upcoming shifts while the previous shift kept working but Ascension Director of Labor Relations, Kathy Bouma, chose to reprimand them instead of finding more help. Only two months later, a New York Times investigation found that Ascension executives have been receiving bonuses since 2017 for “keeping labor costs low” a.k.a short-staffing and laying off nurses en masse, even though the consequences of short-staffing are proven to be deadly!

Although travel/agency nurses have been able to help fill in some of the gaps they are not a long term solution and units in the hospital are still short nurses to this day. We are urging community members to stand with us as we demand Ascension make St. Joe's a safe place for community members to come to, as well as work at. Sign your name to tell Ascension Director of Labor Relations, Kathy Bouma, and other corporate executives that you are ready to stand with the nurses in their contract fight!