Joliet St. Joseph nurses vote to reject Ascension’s ‘last’ contract offer

Joliet — Nurses at Ascension St. Joseph – Joliet voted overwhelmingly this week to reject what Ascension labeled its “best, last, and final” contract offer in efforts to resolve the months-long labor dispute.

According to a statement from the Illinois Nurses Association, 87% of the St. Joseph union nurses voted on the contract and rejected it with 79% of the vote, in line with the union’s executive board’s unanimous recommendation.

The proposal, which was offered on Dec. 5, was only the second official offer put forth by the union since contract negotiations began in May.

The hospital has said in multiple statements that it is “bargaining in good faith” and “listened and heard our nurses and have held productive two-way conversations with their INA representatives” when putting together its most recent offer, but union members have expressed frustration with the bargaining process so far.

“We came to the table with basically all of our proposals ready and Ascension’s lawyers spent months coming to bargaining sessions with nothing prepared,” nurse and executive board member Patricia Meade said in INA’s news release. “Now they are claiming that they ‘can’t move anymore’ and don’t even want to hear our counter proposal.”

Ascension spokesman Timothy Nelson said in a statement, “It is unfortunate our fair and reasonable contract proposal was not ratified by our represented registered nurses. While we remain willing to meet with Illinois Nurses Association to discuss the benefits and details of our proposal, as we have communicated to INA, our nurses, and publicly, the contract proposal that was voted on represents our best and final offer for the RN successor contract.”

On the eve of the contract vote INA organizer and media representative Sarah Hurd called the proposal an improvement over the previous offer and said that she felt the two sides were getting closer to a deal, but that the union could not recommend accepting the contract as it was written.

“We feel we’re getting close to a deal, but we still need to work on a few of the numbers,” she said.

The union members felt that the new contract did not offer enough competitive pay increases to address the ongoing recruitment and retention issues facing the hospital, which has had to scale back some services due to a lack of available nurses and are causing remaining nurses to work significant overtime hours.

“It all comes back to pay,” Hurd said. “They need to pay a rate which makes new nurses come in and makes existing nurses feel like they aren’t doing themselves and their families a disservice by staying in their job.”

The other “sticking point” in the proposal was that it mandates that nurses can be made to work on units outside of their specialty, something that the hospital has already begun doing to address staffing issues on days that units are short staffed.

The union says it wants nurses to have the option to reject these moves.

“It’s a dealbreaker for me, because it’s unfair and unsafe,” nurse Jeanine Johnson said. “They say they just need you as an extra set of hands but next thing you know you’re expected to pass medications, then they are asking you to be the charge nurse and take a team.”

Nurse and negotiation committee member Beth Corsetti also argued that the practice could lead to risks for patients and could put nurses in a position to lose their licenses if something were to go wrong with a patient’s care, something that creates even more stress on employees.

“When I started at this job, it was demanding but gratifying work,” Corsetti said. “Now I have trouble sleeping on nights before I have a shift scheduled because I have such bad anxiety about what might happen.”

The Illinois Nurses’ Association is hoping the no vote will bring Ascension back to the bargaining table to work on these remaining issues and hear its prepared counterproposal. Though it is unclear how much more the hospital will be willing to change.

Ratifying this contract offer “would have allowed us to increase RN wage rates up to 19% – improving our ability to recruit and retain nurses from across the region, enhance staffing and, ultimately, provide our nurses with the recognition they deserve,” Nelson said. “We must now review other options for addressing our recruitment and retention needs as we continue to provide quality care to our community.”

As of Wednesday morning, no further negotiations had been scheduled, and it seemed likely bargaining would not resume until after Christmas.