When it became clear Monday that Rush University Medical Center nurses had secured enough votes for union representation, two of Olivia Bouchard’s co-workers ran up and gave her a hug.
“You just won your union,” one of the women said to a beaming Bouchard, who helped organize the nurses.
They were in a jubilant crowd of about 50 nurses gathered Monday at the Billy Goat Tavern in the West Loop for a watch party as the National Labor Relations Board tallied the union election votes.
Within two hours of the tally, the nurses had reached enough votes in favor of being represented by the National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of the larger National Nurses United. The final count saw 77% of nurses vote in support — a number the group chanted in celebration.
“We are united in our front,” said Bouchard, a nurse in the hospital’s labor and delivery unit. “And once you get a big group of powerful — mostly women — together, we make moves pretty fast.”
In total, 1,190 nurses voted to form a union while 350 voted against doing so, according to the group. The union is expected to include about 2,000 nurses at Rush University Medical Center in the Illinois Medical District on the city’s Near West Side, according to the National Nurses Organizing Committee.
The National Nurses Organizing Committee represents more than 6,500 nurses at other Chicago area hospitals including the University of Chicago Medicine, Cook County Health and the Jesse Brown Veterans Administration Medical Center.
There has been a wave of nurses unionizing across the country and locally. At four Endeavor Health hospitals, thousands of nurses recently went public with their efforts to form a union.
Rush nurses publicly announced their petition for a union election in April at a rally outside of Rush University Medical Center. In the weeks since, the nurses gained support from national figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, who posted on social media that the hospital could “afford to provide better working conditions for nurses & staffing levels that are safe for their patients,” because of how much Rush pays its CEO.
In a statement, Rush official Deana Sievert said the hospital will work to ensure the election results are promptly validated.
“Rush is reviewing the preliminary polling results from the union election among nurses at Rush University Medical Center,” Sievert said in the statement. “We deeply respect the right of our nurses to participate in the election and thank everyone who made their voices heard.”
Jennifer Pearl was among the Rush nurses at the watch party who became emotional as the election results were delivered. The numbers felt validating, she said, especially because of past unsuccessful attempts to unionize registered nurses at the hospital.
“All those emotions for the senior nurses to finally win union,” Pearl said. “It’s an emotion for me, for all the hard work — it wasn’t in vain, all the time away from my kids, my family, missing things. It validated that I made the right decision to do that.”
Pearl and other nurses said they had spent months talking to colleagues between shifts as part of the campaign to unionize.
Bouchard said nurses want their first contract to address nurse-to-patient ratios.
Conner Smith works in the emergency department, where she said she often juggles patients who are in critical condition who may need more individualized care than others.
Smith said pay transparency is another issue they want the contract to address.
“At Rush, nurses of the same work background [and] experience are making completely different salaries,” Smith said. “With the union, we are going to negotiate a pay scale so that way nurses will be paid fairly and transparently.”
Bouchard also said it’s important to her that each unit is equipped with an educator nurse “so that nurses are providing the best evidence-based practice to our patients.
“Right now I educate others on our unit, so we want to have a nurse that’s designed to do that, that has the time and capacity to make sure nurses are well-prepared for their roles,” she said.
It’s not yet clear when the nurses will start bargaining their first contract. For now, they continued celebrating the results of the union election. Wearing bright red union T-shirts, one of the nurses passed out a round of Malört shots to the group.
“Union power,” the group chanted as they took the shots.
