Union wants Our Lady of Angels in Joliet to pursue alternatives to closing.

Union members at Our Lady of Angels Retirement Home are urging management to take a harder look at options other than closing it.

The nursing home, which opened in Joliet in 1962, is scheduled to close by March.

Employees have stepped up a campaign aimed at averting the closure and plan a protest Dec. 17 at the nursing home.

Members of the Illinois Nurses Association, which organized 70 employees at OLA this year, contend that management needs to explore alternatives to closing.

“OLA needs to exhaust every avenue to find a path forward, under current ownership or through a buyer,” employees said in a letter to management released by the Illinois Nurses Association on Friday.

The letter was sent jointly from employees and OLA residents, the INA said.

The INA represents 70 employees at the nursing home organized into a union in August. Reports that the nursing home could close emerged in October. In November, management announced that they planned to close the facility Feb. 28.

Our Lady of Angels is owned by a nonprofit created by the Joliet-based Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate, which could not be reached for comment Friday.

The order announced the nursing home closing, saying it is losing money and does not have the funds needed for improvements to the building.

The nursing home lost $2.5 million in its last fiscal year alone, Sister Jeanne Bessette, president of the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate, told The Herald-News last month.

Bessette at the time said OLA faces economic issues that trouble other nursing homes. But the impact is more severe for OLA because it is a stand-alone facility without the economics of scale available to other nursing homes that are part of larger corporations.

The INA in its news release Friday pointed to $5.5 million in COVID-19 relief funding received by the nursing home and called for more transparency concerning the financial condition of Our Lady of Angels.

“We have identified multiple opportunities to raise capital to address the budget shortfall you have claimed is the reason for your closing,” the INA said in the release. “You have responded by rejecting these opportunities out of hand.”

The union organized a recent community meeting on the future of OLA attended by employees, families of residents and elected officials including Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk.

Management did not attend, despite being invited, the union said.

The union continues to try to negotiate a contract with nursing home management despite the planned closing. The INA said it filed an unfair labor practice concerning the recent termination of a nurse before the matter was resolved.