Chicago-area nurses continued their fight against Prime Healthcare on Tuesday, holding a one-day strike at Olympia Fields Hospital.
The action was the third nurses strike at Prime hospitals in the Chicago area in recent months.
Nurses have been organizing and holding strikes and pickets at local Prime hospitals since Prime bought eight Illinois hospitals last year, and a ninth — Olympia Fields — earlier this year.
The nurses at Olympia Fields are planning to vote next week on whether to join the National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of the National Nurses United. The nurses contend that Prime suspended six Olympia Fields nurses, and then fired two of them, after they participated in union activity. The nurses also say Prime suspended a nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston and fired six nurses at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago.
“We are striking in protest of Prime’s illegal actions,” said Jennifer Peterson, an Olympia Fields nurse who went on strike Tuesday. The nurses, she said, were suspended and fired “for speaking up for their patients and for accountability.”
Peterson said the nurses decided to unionize because of problems including short staffing and supply shortages.
More Top Picks Best Tattoo Client Chairs
“This is our community,” said Peterson, who said she’s worked at Olympia Fields for 21 years. “I want to see my community hospital be an excellent place for people to get care.”
A Prime spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that Prime respects the right of its nurses to organize: “However, the union has chosen to strike before a vote can even be held, and allegations of retaliation are inaccurate. While we cannot comment on confidential personnel matters, any employment action is based on longstanding hospital policies and standards, not on union activity or protected rights.”
Prime said in the statement that the one-day strike was not expected to disrupt care.
Prime also said it remains committed to bargaining in good faith with nurses at St. Mary of Nazareth. Nurses at that hospital have gone on two one-day strikes since June.
As for St. Francis Hospital, Prime said it respects the right of nurses “to engage in legally protected activity and to make their own individual decision about union representation.”
The nurses at St. Francis were supposed to hold a union election Sept. 17, but the National Labor Relations Board granted the union’s request to cancel the election after the union alleged that the hospital was suspending employees because of union activity, polling employees about their union sympathy and threatening to fire employees because of their union activity, among other allegations. A National Labor Relations Board official wrote in the order canceling the election that the union described evidence, that if proved to be true, “could affect employee free choice in an election.”
Prime said in a statement Tuesday: “We strongly dispute the allegations made by the union in seeking to suspend the election. Many Saint Francis nurses have openly expressed their desire to remain non-union, and their voices and rights deserve the same respect and protection as those of nurses who support union representation. Suspending the election denies nurses the opportunity to make that choice for themselves through a fair vote.”
In addition to the nurse strikes, Prime, a for-profit company, has also faced criticism for changes it’s made at Illinois hospitals since buying them.
Prime announced earlier this month that it plans to suspend obstetric care at three of its Illinois hospitals due to low numbers of patients delivering at those facilities and centralize the services at St. Mary of Nazareth and Olympia Fields.
Prime has previously said it’s invested more than $100 million in the nine hospitals, which had been struggling financially before Prime bought them, and some local health care leaders have praised Prime for working to keep the hospitals sustainable.
More Top Picks Best Folding Treadmills