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player ready...Nurses at Endeavor Health Edward Hospital have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election – part of a broader effort by nurses across the health system to organize.
“We decided we want our voices to be heard,” said Elizabeth Garcia, who has worked as a nurse at Edward Hospital for 22 years. “We think that our experience of knowing our patients, advocating for our patients, allows us to have a seat on the table, and that’s basically what we want to get out of this.”
If successful, 1,000 nurses at Edward Hospital would be represented by the National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United.
Edward Hospital is not the only Endeavor Health facility with unionization efforts underway. Thousands of nurses across the nine-hospital Endeavor Health system have been in discussions to unionize for months, with National Nurses Organizing Committee and Teamsters Local 743.
Endeavor nurses are hoping to unionize because of unsafe staffing levels, heavy workloads and pay that hasn’t kept up with inflation and the cost of living, said David Bernt, organizing director of Teamsters Joint Council 25, which represents workers across Illinois and Northwest Indiana.
Nurses at the other Endeavor hospitals have not yet filed any petitions to hold union elections with the National Labor Relations Board, Bernt said.
Endeavor said in a statement this week, in response to questions about the unionization efforts, that it “respects the federally-protected rights of our nurses to make an informed choice about union representation.”
“We also recognize the challenges in providing safe, seamless patient care when a union acts as the intermediary between our nurses and the hospital leadership,” Endeavor said in the statement. “One of our greatest strengths is our nurses’ ability to work together directly and collaboratively with their leaders and care teams to achieve nursing excellence in service to our patients and communities.”
At Edward Hospital, Garcia said that one of the main issues she and her co-workers are facing is staffing and retention levels. Garcia works as a nurse in the intensive care unit, where staffing levels are typically two-patients-to-one-nurse or sometimes one-patient-to-one-nurse for very critical patients, she said.
“(When) a patient’s so sick, it consumes all your time and sometimes you need help,” she said.
However, Garcia said she does not always get to maintain that one-to-one staffing level for patients that need critical care due to not having enough nurses, which she said creates an unsafe working environment.
Sometimes, she said she will be given three patients to take care of because that third patient has been downgraded and should be transferred to another unit but the other unit is full and no one is available to take on that other patient.
“When you’re being tripled, you’re taking care of three family members, three people’s loved ones and still hold it to your critical care standards,” she said. “It’s hard to turn off critical care standards … and it does take away time from your ICU patients.”
Those kinds of working environments also discourage nurses from staying at Edward Hospital, Garcia said.
In addition to improved staffing levels, Garcia noted that her and her colleagues also want better compensation.
“I think we would want to just get overall improved compensation, improved benefits, that would be nice,” Garcia said. “But what we’re really fighting (for) here is for safer working conditions, safer ratios. We love our community. I’ve been in this community for 22 years and I’m very passionate about it. I’m like a mama bear when it comes down to my patients and my community.”
The petition to unionize for Edward Hospital nurses was filed on Thursday, but a date for a union election has not yet been set, Garcia said. As for nurses at other Endeavor Health hospitals, Bernt was unable to provide a timeline for filing petitions, but he said, “We believe we have enough support to move forward.”
Teamsters Local 743 has already, however, filed charges against Endeavor with the National Labor Relations Board, after the union said two nurses were fired from Endeavor Health Evanston Hospital earlier this year because of their union activities.
Endeavor did not comment directly on the alleged firings.
Tricia Poreda, a critical care resource nurse at Endeavor, said nurses across the system feel demoralized by staffing changes in recent years. As part of her job, Poreda floats between Endeavor’s Evanston, Glenbrook, Skokie and Highland Park hospitals.
“They’ve been running staffing so lean that we’re not able to accommodate any extra emergent situation or deterioration in a patient,” Poreda said. “It leaves nurses providing care that is not up to the standard of care for patients.”
Endeavor nurses also experienced pay cuts in 2025, she said.
In 2024 and 2025, Endeavor saw operating losses of $494 million and $33.9 million, respectively, according to financial statements. Much of the 2024 operating loss was attributable to $453 million in expenses to settle patients’ claims alleging one of Endeavor’s former doctors sexually abused them, Endeavor said in a financial disclosure in late 2024. The financial statement did not name the doctor, but as of early 2025, Endeavor had settled more than 75 lawsuits filed by patients who alleged they were sexually abused by former obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Fabio Ortega.
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Poreda said she personally saw a $9 an hour pay cut. She said the cuts made nurses feel “undervalued and disrespected.”
Endeavor did not immediately comment on the pay cuts early Tuesday afternoon.
Unionization efforts for nurses have also taken place recently in other Chicago area hospitals.
Over the past year, National Nurses Organizing Committee has organized nearly 3,000 nurses in the Chicago area, including at Olympia Fields Hospital, Rush University Medical Center and Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital. The National Nurses Organizing Committee now represents 9,000 nurses in the Chicago area.