15 February 2023
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Registered nurses at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis who joined a union held a rally Wednesday morning as the union began to negotiate their first contract. Some nurses from Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph joined them.
The RNs at St. Francis voted to unionize last November. The vote was 378 to 194 to join the National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United.
Several dozen nurses held signs while standing along St. Francis Street on Wednesday. Their messages ranged from “Our burnout led to this turnout” to “Patients over profits” to “Under staffing means delay of care and puts patients’ lives at risk!”
“We show up every day to go to work for our patients,” Sara Wilson, an RN in the orthopedic trauma unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis, said. “We became nurses to take care of our patients, and we’ve been run really thin working short for too long, and it’s time that Ascension listens to us.”
Shelly Rader, RN in the emergency department at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis, said the nurses are ready for the bargaining table.
“This is a historic day, not only for us but for our patients, our community, Wichita in itself,” she said.
Both nurses claim there is a staffing crisis at the hospital.
“We need better staffing,” Wilson said. “We need Ascension to get better at recruiting and retaining nurses, and we need to have a better safety-worker violence program. Nurses are in danger when they go to work, and Ascension needs to take care of their nurses.”
Rader said she hopes “that they listen to us and realize that we have a voice and that we want to help in making the policies and the changes that need to be made.”
KSN News reached out to Ascension Via Christi for its response. A spokesperson sent this statement:
We will be bargaining in good faith with NNU over the terms and conditions of employment for a limited group of nursing associates at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis. Negotiating a labor contract can be a lengthy process, and we are looking forward to beginning talks so that NNU-represented associates may have the same access to competitive pay and benefits we provide to our non-union associates.”
Roz Hutchinson, communication and public relations, Ascension Via Christi Health Inc.
RNs at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph have filed a petition for union representation with the National Labor Relations Board. So St. Joseph nurses also participated in the rally outside St. Francis.
Whitney Steinike, RN in the adolescent psychiatric unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph, said they hope to know the petition results by the end of the week. She said if they are successful, the St. Joseph nurses will join the St. Francis nurses at the bargaining table.
“We are fighting for better standards of care for our patients and entire community, and we are also hoping to prioritize patient care and safety in the hospitals for the patients and the nurses,” she said.
Steinike said having the St. Francis RNs unionize first has made union efforts at St. Joseph easier. She said there has also been a lot of support from the community.
“It’s amazing to know that the community supports us,” she said. “A lot of people in the community have a family member who’s a nurse or a friend who’s a nurse. They know what the staffing has been like in the hospitals and safety. So it’s so exciting to have their support.”
A union spokesperson said that if St. Joseph RNs are successful, NNOC/NNU will represent nearly 1,000 Wichita-area nurses at the two Ascension facilities.
“NNU nurses nationwide know that a strong contract is a key piece of our fight for better patient care, especially when it comes to staffing,” NNU President Deborah Burger, RN, said in a news release. “We’re so excited to see nurses organizing and fighting for strong contracts all over the country, and Wichita nurses are part of a union committed to taking on corporate health care for the sake of our communities’ health.”