Nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison have filed official charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the hospital’s parent company, SSM Health, for allegedly violating federal law by refusing to negotiate a contract with the recently established nurses’ union. 

The hospital’s nurses voted by a landslide earlier this summer to establish a union — a result that SSM fought to prevent the NLRB from recognizing. The efforts of management to prevent the union recognition were rebuffed by federal officials. 

In a news release on Tuesday, the nurses argued that hospital administration is wasting time engaging in anti-union activities when instead negotiations on a labor contract should be getting underway. 

The nurses have complained that the hospital administration has reduced staffing to unsafe levels, putting patient safety at risk. Staffing levels at St. Mary’s are the lowest of Madison’s seven hospitals. 

“SSM should be investing in staffing, support and retention of nurses, not wasting time and resources fighting our union, which is our voice to speak up for our patients,” St. Mary’s nurse Hannah Joers said in a statement released by the union. “Our number one goal is to win a contract which better takes patients’ level of sickness into account for staffing, and makes sure that we keep nurses by the bedside. SSM executives in St. Louis are abusing our empathy, making us do more and more with less and less. We’ve had enough, and the time has come to transform the system so that our patients’ needs come first. We will never back down and we are 1,000% determined to win a strong contract to provide the highest quality patient care.”

The union election of nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison was certified Wednesday after a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board overruled the objections of the hospital’s parent company, SSM Health. 

On June 11, nurses at the hospital voted 89% to form a union. It was the largest representation election in Wisconsin in at least a quarter century. The nursing staff at St. Mary’s previously told the Wisconsin Examiner that they were seeking to form a union over concerns about procedures, staffing and compensation and a lack of responsiveness from hospital management. 

The St. Louis-based SSM Health had objected to the election, arguing that charge nurses at the hospital should not be allowed to vote or join the union because they hold a supervisory role. At the nearby Meriter Hospital in Madison, charge nurses are part of the union. 

The company had filed its objections about the charge nurses prior to the election but the NLRB had decided to delay ruling on the question and the charges nurses were allowed to vote but their ballots were kept separate. 

The hospital system’s objections included claims that the delayed decision affected the election results, that charge nurses engaged in pro-union electioneering, that the union caused disruptions to the hospital’s human resources staff, that a pro-union staffer brought cookies to the voting area and that union supporters tried to enter the voting area. 

Jennifer Hadsall, the director of the NLRB region that includes Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and parts of Iowa, wrote in her ruling that for most of the objections, the system did not include proof of the complaint or that the activity affected the election results. 

“I have concluded, for the reasons set forth in this decision, that the offer of proof produced by the Employer is not sufficient to meet its burden of showing that the proffered evidence would be grounds for setting aside the election if introduced and credited at a hearing,” Hadsall wrote.

While the election was certified, the board has still not ruled on the question of charge nurses joining the union. 

After the ruling, nurses at the hospital celebrated the decision and urged hospital management to stop working to prevent the unionization and instead start bargaining. 

“The Labor Board has spoken, our community has spoken, elected leaders have spoken, St. Mary’s nurses have spoken, and we have resoundingly declared that it’s time for SSM to respect our union vote so we can start working on solutions for our patients,” Zach Zahalka, a nurse in the hospital’s cardiac catheterization lab, said in a statement. “As nurses, this work is a calling, and our primary role is to be our patients’ advocates. Forming our union is an extension of that patient advocacy, and we urgently have to solve the crisis of understaffing and loss of experienced nurses at St. Mary’s.”

“SSM needs to stop trying to undermine our union,” he added, “and instead focus all their resources on engaging with us productively so that together we can create real solutions for better staffing and retention to provide the best care.”

Lisa Adams, a spokesperson for the hospital, said in a statement that the hospital is reviewing the decision. 

“SSM Health respects the federal labor law process. We have received the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) staff decision and are reviewing it,” she said.