Participants hold candles at a vigil for striking nurses outside Meriter hospital in Madison Thursday evening. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Roughly 150 nurses and their allies gathered at dusk Thursday for a vigil to show support for the strike underway at Meriter hospital in Madison.

The crowd was smaller than the throngs that have gathered outside the hospital during daily picketing and rallies, but the feelings they conveyed were no less intense.

“We’re holding this vigil because beneath the charts, beneath the chants, beneath the signs and beneath the daily strength that it takes to strike is something deeply serious,” said emergency room nurse Shelby Davis. “We’re not just here for better contracts. We’re here for safety, for dignity, for the basic right to care for our patients without risking their lives or our own.”

With the vigil, organized with the involvement of two church pastors, the nurses and their union sought to cast the issues that led to the five-day walkout as a matter of moral principle.

“You are doing holy work,” said Pastor Justin Dittrich of Lake Edge Lutheran Church, opening the vigil at Brittingham Park on Madison’s near South Side, a block from the hospital grounds.

“The strike is not the end, but the beginning of a more just health care system for all people, workers and participants,”  Dittrich added. “We stand with the nurses of Meriter because they are healers, truth tellers, and agents of faith and justice.”

UnityPoint Health-Meriter and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin are in the midst of negotiations for a new labor agreement for about 1,000 nurses who work at the hospital. The nurses union began a five-day strike Tuesday after a bargaining session May 19 ended without a new agreement, and after the union’s bargaining team said management negotiators were not responding adequately to their concerns about staffing levels, hospital security and compensation.

Negotiations resumed Thursday, during which union bargaining team members reported some progress, and continued on Friday.

Among the union’s primary issues in negotiations has been a demand for specific ratios of nurses to patients.

“Even though I work in the ER and not on the floor, I see how staffing levels affect every part of the hospital,” said Davis. “I’ll never forget the one moment during my nurse residency, a new grad was recognized for taking care of seven patients on their own. Seven. That wasn’t a badge of honor, that was a red flag.”

The hospital management has said dictating ratios would interfere with its need for flexibility to respond to changing conditions.

Speakers said the demand is not just in the interest of nurses, but a matter of concern for patients as well.

“Ratios are for us — yeah, absolutely,” said nurse Dara Pierce. “But they’re also for everybody else and I think sometimes that goes unnoticed.”

The fear of violence in the workplace has driven nurses to demand a stronger role in formulating security policy, speakers said, along with measures such as metal detectors.

“We’ve had violent or unpredictable situations come through our doors with just one security guard assigned to ER and no metal detectors,” said Davis. “No one should have to feel unsafe when they’re coming to a hospital and no nurse should be expected to risk their life just to do their job.”

The lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began five years ago, continues to weigh on health care workers, nurse Annette Bernas told vigil participants.

“We were considered essential, but let’s be honest, we were expendable,” she said. “We didn’t complain. We showed up. We held hands when family members couldn’t.”

As the pandemic laid bare the importance of health care and health care workers, “we were hopeful that everything we gave would open the eyes of the world to the importance of nurses and support staff,” Bernas said. “But here we find ourselves in a deeper crisis. The burnout is real. Nurses are leaving in waves. PTSD from those years is something we still carry, and yet we’re being asked to do more with less.”

After the speeches the crowd walked behind a large yellow banner, carrying flickering candles from the park to the hospital entrance on Brooks Street.

There Pastor Raymond Monk of Milwaukee offered a benediction. 

“This new course has caused many of you all to make a decision to make sure that your voices are heard and the voices of those who are hurting, their voices are heard also,” said Monk. “I want to encourage you at this pivotal moment in history to continue to defy the norms and to make known to the world that things must change and that things must change right now.”

Faith upholds their cause, he suggested, adding that God “is always on the side of the oppressed.”

Striking nurses picket outside UnityPoint-Health Meriter hospital Wednesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Nurses at Meriter hospital in Madison and the hospital’s management team are returning to the bargaining table Thursday, the third day of a five-day strike over a new labor agreement covering nearly 1,000 union-represented nurses.

The nurses, represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin, went on strike Tuesday after their last negotiating session with UnityPoint Health-Meriter on May 19 ended without an agreement.

As nurses rallied and picketed in front of the hospital Wednesday, the issue of staffing requirements was at the forefront of arguments offered by both the nurses and the hospital’s management.

“Let me be very clear, it is not unreasonable to want safe staffing guaranteed in our contracts,” said Carly Dickmann, a Meriter obstetrics, labor and delivery nurse.

“It is not unreasonable to want to feel safe at work and to have a voice in the procedures that impact us and our patients,” Dickmann continued. “It is not unreasonable to want fair compensation for our labor. It’s long past time for management to take us seriously. It’s time that Meriter listen to nurses and come to the table ready to make real, tangible changes to improve the hospital we love so dearly.”

A management position paper distributed Wednesday by the hospital’s communications department asserted that the hospital and the union both “agree that staffing levels are a critical component to safe patient care.”

The paper stated that the hospital’s approach to staffing assignments needed “to remain flexible” so it could move personnel in response to “patient needs and census changes.” It said the hospital would review “the staffing matrix” in four units the union identified as having problems, and that nurses and support staff in the affected units would be included in the process.

At the union’s picket line rally on Tuesday, bargaining team member Amber Anderson said the management proposal fell short.

“Meriter management refuses to put staffing solutions in our contract,” Anderson said, calling the management proposal “a vague promise to review staffing with no timelines, no accountability and no enforceable standards. That is not enough.”

The union has also focused on security and on wages. Union proposals have sought  increases particularly for nurses with the longest tenure, as well as metal detectors in certain areas.

The management paper said average wages would go up by $4.67 an hour over the life of the agreement under the hospital’s proposal, and that Meriter had plans to install weapons screening equipment in its emergency department this summer.

At Wednesday’s picket line rally, striking nurses heard messages of support from Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth).

Pocan recalled his visit to Meriter for three clogged arteries seven and a half years ago.

“And I got time to spend in the ICU and other rooms here at Meritor, and I received excellent health care,” Pocan said. “Not because of the comfort of the bed or the colors of the wall, not because of the profitability of the hospital, but because of the staff and the nurses at Meriter.”

Johnson came to Madison because he sees issues in the strike as important “not just for nurses in Madison, but really for nurses all across the state of Wisconsin,” he said in an interview. “When you stand with labor, it’s not just a sometime thing, it’s an all the time thing.”

Strikers also got support from union activists organizing at other area health care employers.

“The people who own the health care industry are running a race to the bottom, where executives try to lower quality of care, increase ratios as much as they possibly can get away with,” said Colin Gillis, who has been active in the effort begun more than five years ago to win union representation for nurses at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison.

“And when they do it here, at the hospital next door, they look at their nurses and they say, ‘Hey, they take six patients at night, so can you,” Gillis said. “Well, you and your nurses are here to say, ‘Heck, No!’”

Dr. Ira Segal, who has been among the employees at Group Health Cooperative in Madison organizing a union, said his coworkers see the Meriter nurses as allies.

“Together, we will persevere and we will shape a future where workers and patients come before profit, and where every voice is heard,” Segal said.

Striking nurses and supporters circle the UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital in Madison on the first day of a five-day walkout Tuesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

With a spirited rally, a picket line march around the building and a small brass band, nurses at UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital in Madison launched a five-day walkout Tuesday, reiterating their demands for changes in safety practices, minimum ratios of nurses to patients and improved pay.

The strike — the first ever by nurses at Meriter hospital — is scheduled to run through Saturday. It follows the end of bargaining on Monday, May 19, when the nurses’ union bargaining team turned down the hospital management’s latest proposal.

Services Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin and UnityPoint Health-Meriter have been in negotiations since earlier this year on a new contract covering about 950 nurses. The nurses’ most recent two-year agreement expired in late March and they have since been working without a contract.

The nurses’ contract demands include establishing required ratios of nurses to patients, improved safety for hospital employees and pay increases — particularly for senior nurses, according to union officials.

“Time and time again, Meriter’s management refused to meet us halfway,” said nurse Lindsey Miller, one of three bargaining team members who spoke at the strike’s opening-day rally Tuesday morning. “At our last bargaining session, it was management, not nurses, who walked away from the bargaining table.”

Miller said the most recent management officer included “an unacceptable raise that doesn’t cover the cost of living” and made “no progress” towards the nurses’ union’s demands for staffing commitments or security improvements.

“I am striking because I love working here,” said Madison Vander Hill, a birthing center nurse and one of six union speakers at the rally. “I love getting to walk alongside and care for families as they go through one of the most transformative experiences of their lives.”

Vander Hill said she and other nurses were striking “because we must see tangible change from management in order to ensure that safety and security are prioritized and the things we love about the work that we do are protected.”

Her coworker, Audrey Willems Van Dijk, said the nurses’ concerns extended to concerns for the hospital’s patients.

“We are fighting for every single person who walks through Meriter’s doors,” she said. “Yes, we deserve adequate compensation, but more than that, we deserve safety and security for ourselves and our community. We deserve respect.”

Dane County Executive Melissa Agard declared her support for the nurses and connected their dispute with former Gov. Scott Walker’s signature legislation after he took office in 2011 — Act 10, stripping most public workers of most union rights.

“It was his mission to crack the foundation of union rights in the state of Wisconsin. And that crack has continued not only in Wisconsin but across our nation, and you guys are here to say, ‘No more,’” Agard said.

As the strike got underway this week, Meriter told nurses that health benefits — including health insurance — would be cut off as of June 1 for nurses who do not report for their first scheduled shift during the strike this week.

A union spokesperson said the effect of the order would be to cut off benefits for strikers for the month of June if the two sides don’t reach a tentative agreement on Thursday, when their next bargaining session is scheduled.

Meriter spokesperson Nicole Aimone confirmed in an email message Tuesday that nurses who do not report for their first shift during the strike will be put on “inactive status” through Sunday, June 1, with their benefits ending as of that date.

Nurses whose benefits are cut off would have to use the federal law known as COBRA to maintain their coverage, paying for their insurance out of pocket. The law, enacted in the 1980s, enables fired or laid-off workers to maintain their employer’s health insurance temporarily at their own cost.

“They will have the ability to re-enroll once they are placed back into active employee status,” Aimone said.

The union has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over the hospital’s action.

“It is outrageous and it is disgusting,” said Ben Wikler, the outgoing chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, addressing the rally. Wikler went on to lead hundreds of sign-carrying nurses and supporters in chanting, “Union busting is disgusting!”

“When management says you’ll lose your health insurance if you insist that there [should be] enough nurses on the floor to make sure that everyone is taken care of — it is disgusting,” Wikler said.

He described the dispute in the larger context of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

“They think that the Trump administration and the National Labor Relations Board that this administration has gotten is going to turn its back on working people,” Wikler said.

“They will still have to come back to the negotiating table and they will have to do what’s right, because you are building the power to make them do what’s right,” he added.

The hospital is continuing to operate during the strike. Aimone said that the hospital has contracted with an outside agency for replacement “travel nurses” to support ongoing patient care.

She said she did not have information on the cost for the contract nurses who are filling in during the walkout.

SEIU Wisconsin and UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital will meet May 29 to resume contract talks covering 950 nurses. But the hospital management and the union have given conflicting accounts about plans for earlier negotiations. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

SEIU Wisconsin and Meriter hospital management confirmed Wednesday plans to meet on Thursday, May 29 to resume negotiation on a new contract covering about 950 nurses.

Talks ended Monday without an agreement, and the union said it would go forward on Tuesday, May 27, with a five-day strike.

On Wednesday, however, the two parties gave contradictory accounts of the conclusion of their talks and the prospect of further negotiations before the walkout begins.

In Meriter’s initial statement on Tuesday after the strike was announced, the hospital reported that a bargaining session was scheduled for Monday, May 26.

In a statement Wednesday, however, the union bargaining committee said they had never scheduled talks for that day.

UnityPoint Health-Meriter issued an updated statement Wednesday asserting that “SEIU Wisconsin notified Meriter on Tuesday that they are no longer available to meet on May 26 and are now offering May 29 as their first available date to resume negotiations.”

The management statement quoted Meriter’s vice president of human resources Shana Wuebben: “SEIU Wisconsin has declined the bargaining session previously set for Monday, May 26 and has rescheduled bargaining sessions to Thursday, May 29 near the end of the 5-day strike period,” Wuebben said.

The bargaining committee flatly disputed the characterization that the Monday date had been agreed to.

“There was no agreement between the parties to meet on Monday May 26,” the committee’s statement said.

In the hospital’s statement, Wuebben said, “Meriter is listening. We have made great strides in our proposals and tentative agreements to date.  And we are ready to continue bargaining.”  

The union, however, charged that management — not the union — was responsible for ending the talks Monday.

“At our last bargaining session on Monday May 19, the union bargaining committee offered to stay as late as needed to reach an agreement,” the bargaining committee statement said.

“The union was clear that management needed to make movement on our core priorities — priorities we have been crystal clear about since Day 1 — in order to avoid a strike,” the committee said. “Instead of engaging in discussions about our priority issues, management chose to end the bargaining session.”

Wuebben reiterated that Meriter’s management negotiators are “ready to return to the bargaining table at any time.” 

The union statement said bargaining team members are also ready to return to the table, but said they would need to see evidence that management was willing to move on their issues relating to staffing ratios, stronger hospital security and compensation.

“The union bargaining team has consistently made themselves available to meet with Meriter management, and we will continue to do so,” the union statement said. “If Meriter management would commit to make meaningful movement on our priority issues before the strike, we would consider scheduling a meeting with them before Tuesday May 27.”

Pat Raes, a Meriter hospital nurse and president of SEIU Wisconsin, addresses union nurses and their supporters at a rally April 8, 2025. On Tuesday the union announced it would strike starting May 27. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Nurses at Madison’s Meriter hospital plan to walk off the job for five days starting Tuesday, May 27, after negotiations on a new union contract ended Monday night without an agreement.

The hospital management and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin, which represents about 950 nurses at the hospital, are divided over pay, security provisions and whether the hospital should commit to specific ratios of how many patients are under a nurse’s care.

If the strike goes forward, it is scheduled to last for five days, with union members returning on Sunday, June 1.

Update: In a statement Tuesday, Meriter said there was a bargaining session scheduled for Monday, May 26, the day before the strike is scheduled to start. An SEIU Wisconsin spokesperson said Wednesday that the union never agreed to that session, and that a bargaining date has been scheduled for Thursday, May 29.

In order to allow hospitals to secure temporary replacement staff or move patients, federal law requires hospital workers to give at least 10 days notice before striking, which SEIU Wisconsin gave May 9. The union also opted for a fixed duration for the walkout.

“We don’t take going on strike lightly, but we truly feel in order to make the changes that are necessary we’re willing to fight to make things safe for our patients,” said Pat Raes, a long-time Meriter nurse and also president of SEIU Wisconsin, in an interview May 14.

“We’ve called a five-day strike because our goal isn’t to walk away from the table — it’s to make UnityPoint Meriter finally hear the voices of nurses,” Raes said Tuesday. “This timeline reflects the urgency of our demands while giving the hospital every opportunity to return to negotiations in good faith.”

She said the five-day window was chosen to match the standard five-day contract used by health care staffing agencies, such as would be called to cover the striking nurses, “to send a strong, clear message without unnecessary disruption to patient care. We hope Meriter uses these five days to come back with real solutions.”

The hospital, UnityPoint Health-Meriter, is one of 17 regional hospitals in the large, Iowa-centered nonprofit health care chain, UnityPoint Health.   

“We’ve been in a union environment for decades and know that a strike could happen. We always work very, very hard to avoid that,” said Sherry Casali, market chief nursing officer for the hospital, in a statement released to the press Tuesday. “I think both parties would prefer not to have a strike.”

The hospital statement said Meriter’s management was disappointed there were not more talks prior to Monday. “Meriter leadership will remain available throughout this week to return to the table and we encourage SEIU to do the same,” the statement said.

In past years, the union and the hospital have worked with federal mediators during contract talks. This year federal mediation wasn’t available after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March gutting the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), nursesan independent federal agency.

Although that order was blocked by a federal judge May 6, the union and hospital turned instead to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

Defined patient-nurse ratios have been a longtime goal for union nurses. California and Massachusetts both have state laws setting certain minimum ratios, according to  NurseJournal.org. A limited number of other states require hospitals to publish their nurse-to-staff ratios.

“The more patients you take care of once you get above that ratio puts every patient that you’re taking care of at higher risk for complications and higher risk for mortality,” Raes said.

The statement the hospital issued Tuesday acknowledged that “both parties agree on the importance of safe and effective staffing,” but said that mandated ratios “limit flexibility” and could make it more difficult “to adjust to patient needs and staff availability in real time.”

The hospital statement said the facility relies on its charge nurses, who “are key to staffing and have clear avenues to discuss any patient care needs throughout each shift.”

There are limits to flexibility, however, according to the members of the nursing staff. Flexibility “sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t,” said Amanda Husk, a postpartum nurse. “We just know there’s always a base need for nurses to make sure patients are safe.”

Husk said ensuring that the ratio of nurses is always sufficient “also prevents burnout and turnover of nurses. That’s a big deal.”

Raes said nurses also wanted stronger security measures — including metal detectors — in light of violent incidents at hospitals across the country that have led to injuries or deaths of health care workers.

The hospital’s statement said its security staff regularly updates security measures and plans additional unspecified changes this summer.

On pay, Raes said that while nurses in their first 12 years have had significant raises, those at the upper end of the scale for pay and longevity don’t see their pay keeping up.

The shift to a 401(k) retirement plan from a standard pension has diminished the incentive for more experienced nurses to stick around, said Raes, while the original pension plan encouraged longevity on the job.

Meriter’s statement said the hospital’s most recent pay offer would keep its nurses “some of the best-paid nurses in Wisconsin” as well as in Madison. 

This report was updated Wednesday with new information about when upcoming bargaining is to take place.